Sideways
by insert amusing name here
Summary: Riku and Sora, who tagged along because he was bribed, have gone out to purchase a gift to buy back Leon and Cloud's fickle affections. However, what day is complete without unresolved emotional tensions, harpoons and marine life? RxS, LxC
1. Prologue

**A/N:** Seeing as I've been eagerly awaiting to deliver my own unique, and slightly deranged spin on one of my favourite gaming experiences, I've decided to share the wealth... or trauma... it's pretty much your call. Anyways, I'd better give some warnings here in case they all don't fit outside:  
1). This is a **Riku/Sora** fic. This means there will be boys doing inappropriate things with and to other boys, (but not too inappropriate, cos I'm hoping to keep this T-rated).  
2). This fic also contains the **Leon/Cloud** pairing, cos I think they're adorable and I know damn well who I'd run to if given the choice between Aeris and the tightest pair of leather pants known to man.  
3). Other hetero pairing include **Tidus/Selphie**, cos they're sweet in a sugar-high sort of way, and possibly **Wakka/Kairi**, seeing as I'm not into Kairi-bashing, and so sort of think she could possibly deserve happiness... Possibly... I may not like the girl, per se, but I won't throw her in a leech infested swamp just for the hell of it, no matter how much I wish I could. So, if anyone complains about Riku being unnecessarily mean to her, I'll ask you to re-read the fic more thoroughly, cos the boy believes in equality, and mocks and insults all of the other characters to a similar extent.  
4). This fic is also slightly AU, although sooner or later it will fully tie inwith the original storyline... but with some strange quirks. Hence, I've messed with ages a bit:  
**Cloud **and **Aeris** are18,  
**Leon** is 17,and so is **Yuffie**, (just so they're closer to their original, FF ages, cos somehow Squall apparently being 25 in KH weirded me out).  
**Riku** and **Wakka **are 16,  
**Sora**, **Selphie** and **Tidus** are15, as is **Kairi**.  
Basically, they're all in secondary education, with Cloud and Aeris in their final year before university... That was easy enough, right?  
5). The opening scene is taken from Chain of Memories, where Kairi comes to save ickle Riku from bad old Zexion and his silly floppy hair, so that's a SPOILER warning gone slightly wrong.  
6). And finally, there is shameless 'Fork'™ interaction in this chapter, AND slight unrepentant Sora-molestation, cos the world's topsy-turvy like that sometimes...

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**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own any of the characters or locations created by both Disney and Square-Enix, and would not appreciate having the clothes sued off my back seeing as I'm not making any money AT ALL out of this. I also don't own Nena's: 99 Red Balloons, or, I think it's NSync's Giddyup, which is a relief. Oh, and I don't own A Christmas Carol or Star Wars either, although that would be pretty cool... However, steal 'Tuna Tuesdays' and 'The Fork'™ at your own peril, for they are by-products of my own twisted imagination.

* * *

"..." Regular speech, peoples talking to other people, or possibly themselves...  
-_italics_- Usually interior monologues or thought processes, though in this case it's just for Riku making tangential asides while he spins his merry dream yarn to an uninterested Leon.  
------------ or 'the big grey line deelies', break up scenes or flashbacks or dream sequences, and pretty much everything else similar to all that has been aforementioned, just to return some semblance of order and coherence.

* * *

**Prologue: (or, Figments, Fantasies and 'Forks'™)**

Classification is a confusing issue; mainly due to the whole sense of ambiguity in which it is addressed, what with the fact that we as people go out of our way to make something more complicated and confusing in order to salvage what little dignity we have.

While I'm fairly certain that to have been driven to this level of internal torment, I must deserve some sort of compensation, I'm also struggling against the more sensible facets of my personality, seeing as asking for help from something I don't even believe in delivers a sense of utmost failure upon my already brittle and warped psyche.

In case you're confused, which is a good thing, trust me, I at least feel slightly validated that I'm not completely hopeless as a human being; I have stripped the last vestige of respectability from my perpetually enduring soul, and have begun to pray desperately for aid to anyone who's willing to deliver it.

Then again, if you can hear my proposal, I guess that means that deities do exist, not that I'd ever admit it… but it would also mean that you'd be pretty damned hysterical about topping up your headcount of worshippers, potential candidates, victims or any other synonym in the vast lexical set available to you. If that were so, then I'd be right about my theory of classification, and it'd also make you kind of pathetic for going to such unfeasible lengths in order to distinguish yourself from the competition.

However, if you're working as a telemarketer for Satan, then I must admit that I have a grudging amount of respect for you, but that's gonna be superseded most of the time by the utter loathing, so don't think the brief respite due to pity is going to help your cause.

As I was saying, and if you weren't listening I won't hold it against you, I have a public announcement to make. Everyone here tuning into this particular brain-wave radio station, playing all Riku, all anguish, all the time, and maybe some random elevator music while I'm attempting to drown out that helium-infused voice representing all of the enmity I could ever muster for a single entity; I've got a proposition for you:

Whoever can supply me with a suitable miracle, and trust me, I'm not asking for much; maybe just some duct tape or a rusty coat hanger, in the shortest period of time, shall be rewarded with the access all areas pass to my immortal soul, to play with as he or she wishes, for better, for worse, for whatever juvenile pranks you think you can pull with it.

Honest to whichever one of you is listening; I really, truly could care less… Use it as an ornate rug, permit your irritating small children to poke it with an innocent form of maliciousness into live plug sockets, let the pet Day-Glo pigmented, lumpy-headed dog bury it in the back garden, just give me the damned duct tape before my brain makes a desperate bid for freedom out of every orifice in my aching head.

I swear, if that thing trips over its mutant feet, possessing an overall tincture closely resembling a delightful shade of yellow that isn't actually found in nature, one more time, and utters anything reminiscent of 'golly', 'gosh', 'oopsy-daisies' or any other half-assed apology, I will snap, and you won't be able to fob off my recently instilled homicidal tendencies by feigning ignorance.

In fact, I'll probably use the duct tape, which I shall obtain, one way or the other, mark my words; to gag the radioactively gargantuan rodent, and tie him to a tacky piece of furniture, just so he stops shuffling from side to side in the newest travesty of a jig he's decided to choreograph. Then I'll use my trusty, rusty coat-hanger…

-Y_ou see what he's done to me? No matter how hard I try to repress it, I keep rhyming at irregular intervals_-

I'm quite sure that sing-along-songs were originally developed as a form of divine punishment, but no deity with even the barest of pretences towards benevolence could subject them upon an undeserving mortal, especially not if the performer is painfully tone deaf… Anyways, I feel bound to beg forgiveness for the outburst; the rage within me seems to fluctuate between the fragile divisions of sanity… I was speaking of implementing the coat-hanger, was I not?

I'd use that to saw off his perfectly circular ears, and wear them as both a war-trophy, and a rather snazzy, if touristy hat. I'd then proceed to issue profanities in every dialect I could recall, usually by replacing them with key phrases within the lyrics of his accursed songs, and then abandon the bastard for the Heartless to devour him, if only to take the responsibility for the abomination out of my hands.

The plan is, unfortunately, ultimately flawed, as the Heartless would probably forsake him as callously as I would have, and one of his forest friends would end up freeing him, I'd be forgiven for our little misunderstanding and I'd never be rid of him, prospect of regicide be damned.

However, seeing as there was the teensy, often overlooked fact that I needed him in order to rendezvous with someone relatively normal -well, not all that normal to be perfectly honest, but it's not like I knew anyone that was nowadays- to be specific, my nemesis, once upon a time.

Now, surfeit of eaves-dropping gods, we probably didn't even remember each other well enough to bicker and strike out blindly; now, he was possibly even a friend of mine. The friendship aspect would be cemented when he discovered that I was being driven mad by a freakishly tall caricature of a woodland creature as well, and we'd give and take solidarity from within each other's common troubles.

Then again, by all accounts, the boy had to deal with two of them; both loyal subjects of His Royal Pain in my Arse. One was definitely enough for me, but even the duck and dog… at least, I think it was a dog,

-_If you could manage to assign it an actual species with the accuracy of prior knowledge, I'd be really grateful if you let me into the loop_-

I think I'll call them critters… Well… not even the pair of… whatever the hells they were could outdo Mickey effing Mouse when it came to handing out neuroses like they were made out of candy. Sugar sodding free… of course…

Heck, knowing Sora; unless he's flipped out as well, which I doubt, seeing as he used to embrace utter weirdness whole-heartedly, with an inane grin on his face that made me want to do things to him… things involving fists and hitting and teeth arcing gracefully through the air, trailing little streamers of blood and spittle.

Not creepy things… I may be deranged by association, but I've not sunk that far yet. My thoughts are solely platonic in their origin; like the way girls can compliment each other for having ridiculously large dewy cow eyes, with irises fashioned from sapphires that cause all other precious stones to hide their many faces in shame, or amicably pointing out how the sunlight plays with the varying shades of chestnut and cinnamon that run riot throughout untamed, perpetually mussed -although still belonging to an entirely theoretical person's- hair…

I teased him because it was as amusing as it was effortless; maybe once because of the resultant pouting, but that's all I'm willing to admit, EVER. Well, that or the overwhelming to desire to monopolise and then make him cry; again, purely for the satisfaction that cruelty has dropped into my contented lap over and over again.

Not that my thighs are sentient, at least, I hope not… Methinks to avoid further confusion, I'm gonna stop mincing and massacring my metaphors; and never personify my limbs again.

So, yeah, for the entertainment value, not because I'm possessive and the only one in all of the plethora of worlds that have cropped up out of nowhere entitled to witness the aesthetic majesty that is the puppy-face.

That expression could turn water into wine if it wanted; well, it'd manipulate someone's common sense into putty and then you could easily send your new zombie slave to fetch you the beverage of choice…

I keep forgetting that he's underage though, and probably shares his code of ethics with good ol' Rizzo. Alcohol is a corrupting force of evil apparently; by resisting its temptation and feminine wiles I fight the ever-looming darkness within me. Personally I think that's a load of bollocks, but it's really, really difficult to disagree with an incensed, evangelical life form that pretty much constitutes the stuff of nightmares in its entirety.

Now I've forgotten what it was I was talking about… Too much time in Heartless city-central probably hasn't done wonders for my attention span; I'll probably end up like Selphie at this rate… minus the perpetual sugar high and the random impulses that make her resemble a ferret on some sort of hallucinogenic drug. However, I think I'd gladly welcome death before I tackled someone to the floor whilst demanding that they 'giddy-up!'

Only once did the hyper-active ball of processed sugar and oddly shaped hair subject me to that humiliation, and I think the sole factor that resultantly stopped her from doing so again was when I started chasing her all over the beach, brandishing one of the oars from my old rowing boat.

I mean, ordinarily, I'm not the sort of guy that's willing to lower himself to the level of a pack-mule, but matters only got drastically worse when she started to sing her happy little phrase, over, and over, and over again. You cannot comprehend the feelings of abject horror evoked in me when I found out that that was a real song she was screeching into the dark, foreboding night sky. Ansem himself could have expanded his knowledge of torture tenfold if he apprenticed under that girl…

Shuddering slightly, effectively dispelling my progressively more worrying thoughts, after placing the blame for them on cabin fever, I pulled myself into a more upright position, resting gently on my elbows as I scanned the immediate area for anything resembling a potential threat.

But then, the darkness that had surrounded me for so long that days and weeks and months had run together into collective nothingness, the ubiquitous collection of shadows that plagued my every waking, and some resting, moments; the darkness that had haunted me and mocked me for what I truly was, was suddenly engulfed by the light.

It didn't burn, as they had promised saccharinely while I slept; it wasn't all-consuming, as I had feared… Why did I remain in such a place? The light was far too powerful to be wielded by a black heart such as mine, it should have stripped away the taint that danced and meandered about my very veins, leaving me diminished, faded, dwindling until entirely vanished, perhaps finally healed…

"You can't fade. No power can defeat you - not the light, not the dark. So don't run from the light - and don't fear the darkness. Both will make you stronger." An eerily familiar, entirely unwelcome voice called out to me, attempting to dispel my fears and answer the questions no mortal should have been privy to.

"What the hell are YOU doing here?" I simply demanded, adopting a suitably snide and pouty expression to convey my distaste for my newfound Ghost of Christmas Past, or spectre of Obi Wan, or whatever the heck she can be described as in relevance to her lack of functions and browser options.

The petite redhead seemed to use the sheer force of her will to physically smooth out her twitching facial muscles at my less than polite query, before unclenching her tiny fists and inhaling deep and jarringly.

"Delivering a prophetic vision, AGAIN… Geez, I knew your long term memory was something only rivalled by goldfishes, but come on… how can it take FIVE DAYS to absorb three paragraphs of destiny?" She queried condescendingly, crossing her arms across her non-existent chest and turning her nose up at me like I'd rolled around in garbage before trundling up into her personal space to treat her to my renowned collection of weasel impersonations.

"Didn't you hear? I was recently diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder… It means that I really… er… really… want a pony?" I asked in an oblivious manner, rejoicing internally at her answering growl of barely suppressed rage.

I could have sworn I heard her mutter something along the lines of: "…anger… ten… shove it up his pansy… goodbye, red balloon!" but by that point I'd sort of tuned out for the benefit of my own ongoing mental well-being. However, never being one to resist the wicked temptations of driving other innocent citizens insane, I hummed a jaunty tune under my breath, though still in perfectly audible ranges of hearing, before fully bursting out into song: "Heute zieh ich meine Runden, Seh die Welt in Truemmern liegen, Hab' nen Luftballon gefunden, Denk' an Dich und lass' ihn fliegen."

"Riku… this is the FIFTH time you've had this dream in as many DAYS! While I must admit that you've certainly gotten far more creative in your methods of irking me to the point of mass homicide, can't we just run through the script properly, just the once?" She fairly begged as I begun to snicker, cutting short my terribly off-key caterwauls in favour of sporting the 'kicked-puppy' face.

Given the mini-wench's repentant expression, I was at least temporarily off the hook, as she began to dither about, cooing at random intervals at my apparent 'cuteness'.

"So… you mean… you don't like the song?" I asked tearfully, jutting out my lower lip as far as was physically possible, whilst adding just a pinch of subtle quivering. The girl looked to be momentarily taken aback, as if forced to reweigh her options as to whether I was just messing with her or genuinely exploiting my seductive skills. As an easily corruptible mortal, she pointed at random and landed on the latter. Doing my damnedest to mask the grin forming over my forlorn features, I let out an entirely fake, breathy sob. "I learned GERMAN for you, Kairi!" I fairly wailed, whilst internally allowing myself to wonder how I had indeed learnt German at all; albeit rather briefly, as Kairi was quirking an eyebrow dubiously in my general direction, as if questioning my dedication to our newfound 'love', which I can barely even think without cringing. Forcing my eyes wider, as if a proverbial light-bulb had been flicked on inches above my head, I gasped in poorly feigned horror. "Stupid, stupid Riku!" I hissed, slapping myself on the forehead with the heel of my hand. "FRENCH is the language of love, not GERMAN!" I exclaimed, as if I had suddenly had some magical sort of epiphany. Kairi's nervous aversion seemed quite able to psychically convey the question: Were you dropped on your head as a child? "However, they are both European, and therefore technically Romance languages… oh noes! German is… well… it's a Germanic language, isn't it? I'm such a hopeless, lovesick fool!" I cried, dramatically splaying the back of one hand over my poor, abused forehead as I fake-swooned.

At this stage, Kairi seemed quite eager to retreat from my company as quickly as her stubby little legs would take her; which meant that yes, I retained my title as the undisputable MASTER.

Unfortunately, as soon as she reached the corners of my straining vision, she recoiled; as if some physical force had shoved her mercilessly back into my dream vista, of sorts.

"Fiiiine, I'll finish the damned dialogue… hard-ass…" She muttered; features so contorted by her glowering that she rather resembled a scowling Maleficent, as had been the usual with the bossy hag. "Darkness, too?" She asked suddenly, deepening her tone to mimic that of some Neanderthallic male blatantly longing for that one extra brain-cell to create at least the semblance of a spark of friction. I was about to grin approvingly at her malevolence, but then I realized that it had been directed my way, so I simply pouted instead. "Especially darkness." She confirmed, simpering at her own authority, although, in my opinion it looked more like she was conversing with sock puppets than actually reading from some preordained script. "Because that power is yours alone. The darkness in your heart is vast and deep... but if you can stare into it unflinching, you'll never know fear again." She concluded with no small sense of accomplishment.

Forced to choose between a veritable plethora of options, seeing as I'd never actually allowed the girl to progress this far through our now familiar conversation, I was mostly torn between scoffing and announcing that I feared nothing, or actually getting the whole scenario over and done with for once.

As the redhead had previously mentioned, we'd been going through the motions every night for the last five, which I was now unable to exclude as just some freak occurrence.

"Um… All this… does that say 'time' or is that a 'q'?" I squinted; failing to decipher the small card taped to a wall of the never-ending which was acting as an impromptu autocue.

"That's IT, Riku, see if I ever help you pound on snotty little emo kids ever again!" She whinged, flouncing off melodramatically into the wings… well, she would have done if she hadn't crashed face first into another invisible wall. She fell back, lavender eyes expanding to unfeasible proportions as she barked out a girlish squeal of fear. She hit the ground with a dull thud, which was soon concealed by the shrieking of rusty hinges as a trapdoor sprung open under her weight. As Kairi's screams echoed away into mere memory, they were replaced by fresh cries of a similar nature, though these seemed to refract about the transparent barriers of my vacant prison and it was hopeless to attempt to locate their origin.

* * *

"So then, while the girlish screeching was still going on, suddenly SORA comes hurtling out of the sky like a pointy, parachute-pant-wearing meteorite, and decides to use my fragile spine as a landing strip." I announce in an excited rush, having reached the climax of my merry little tale. The sullen brunette sitting on the opposite side of the cheap and tacky plastic canteen table still appeared to be pointedly ignoring me, but I was well aware that despite his pretenses he'd heard every word. However, the smaller blonde to his left was leaning forward, all eager smiles and interested noises, elbows planted on the unhygienic surface of said hideous table as his hands cupped his jaw. "And THEN, when he finally had the decency to shift himself, he started whacking ten shades of crap outta me with something rather reminiscent of a five foot long key, made from distorted chicken wire dipped in liquid gold-leaf. It was just so BIZARRE, Leon… what the hell do you think it means?" I demanded sulkily, still utterly mortified at the memory of my mother strolling innocently into my bedroom as I woke up screaming incoherently about not being a bloody padlock. 

"I don't know and I don't care…" Leon answered in a helpful, accommodating voice. Cloud half-heartedly slapped his best friend upside the head at this unsurprising development, sighing like the drama-queen we all knew he was as the icy brunette caught the hand in mid-swipe and placed it firmly back to the tabletop, never taking his stormy eyes from the pages of the book he was reading.

"Any ideas Cloud?" I asked with a poorly concealed sigh. I was getting pretty desperate at this stage, something Leon seemed to agree with as he managed to tear his gaze from his book to stare at me in utter disbelief.

"Well… I sort of got a bit confused when you started talking about simplification and telemarketers," He hedged in embarrassment, pale cheeks tinged with streaks of scarlet that made Leon smile fondly until he realized I was gaping at the rare display of indirect affection and replaced the expression with a well-worn scowl. "BUT, I think I sort of got back on track with the hats and the duct tape." He concluded proudly, before taking a bite out of his ungodly sandwich. "Methinks I could have helped you more if your pretty little speech wasn't so pretentious." He pointed out patronizingly, "You can convey your messages without ingesting a Thesaurus, you know…" He concluded with a self-amused snort, whilst chastising me with a wag of one index finger.

"Just because you have a literacy level rivaling that of a small toddler, doesn't mean you can judge me for having a vocabulary." I retorted haughtily, internally nursing the wounds he had dealt to my growing arsenal of flowery words. "There's really no need to be so jealous, Cloud; having to pore over a word-a-day calendar doesn't make you any less of a moron… I mean man…" I elucidated snidely, before mentally entertaining the image of standing over a Thesaurus with limbs, decked outin a classical hunting pose, cackling my triumph to the skies and declaring that I was now the king of Alphabet Castle.

"Wow, it's mastered put-downs as well… Now all you need is to master the art of backstabbing and then I'll have inadvertently created a master politician." The blonde drawled cruelly, before his brow furrowed again and he adopted a confused, lost expression. "I sort of lost you again when you started to mention the emo person… whatever that actually IS…" He snorted as he rolled his renowned, luminous eyes, and then began to reacquaint himself with his neglected sandwich.

I knew from experience that Cloud wasn't actually all that fond of yellowfin tuna, but seeing as today was a Tuesday, and this was the only day Cloud's timetable coincided with Leon's for lunch in the whole academic week, the blonde always brought in a small, brown paper bag reeking of the stuff.

Last week it had been tuna-fish sashimi, the week before it had been tuna and black olives on mini-pizza bases. Every damned week the boy came in with hideous, inedible tuna, always presented in a slightly different way or recipe, and for someone as intelligent as Leon was, I was quite stunned that he didn't actually seem to be aware of their ritual.

Every other day of the week, Leon would use the lunch period to catch up on his reading, maybe munching on something like an apple if he was feeling particularly adventurous that day, and would shoot you down mercilessly if you tried to cram food into his malnourished person.

However, on a Tuesday, while he would be much unaltered in regards to his literature and overall grouchiness, he would contentedly chow down on Cloud's infernal tuna without even seeming to be aware that he was even eating it. Every damned week I was subjected to this creepy, spellbound interchange, and was horrified that it had somehow become one of the most addictive spectator sports in the history of ever.

Cloud swallowed his mouthful of mayonnaise inundated tuna and shrugged nonchalantly, awarding his culinary efforts with a passing grade. I was undoubtedly fascinated by the devilish little smirk that bloomed on his lips as he gestured sideways with the half-decimated sandwich, smile widening to reveal teeth and a profound sense of accomplishment as Leon allowed himself to be fed by his friend's hand like a docile little kitten; never tearing his gaze from the typeface in front of him.

I let out a breath I hadn't been aware I'd been holding. At least it hadn't been as weird as that time with the salad… Cloud seemed to silently agree with me, and had pretty much stuck to making finger-foods ever since the dreaded incident with 'The Fork'™.

* * *

**FLASHBACK**

It had been your average Tuesday… well, as normal as a Tuesday in my life could get, and Cloud had practically skipped into the refectory with his dreaded brown paper bag. He had gleefully brandished a cling-film sealed bowl of tuna salad far too big for someone of his overall height and stature to consume all by his lonesome –unless we were using Sora and the black pit that dwelled in his stomach as an exception to such a rule- and had then proceeded to dig in as if he had not a single care in the world. After a few minutes of contented munching, pointedly ignoring my general glances of utter distaste, both at his eating habits and his meal-choice, he proffered the business end of the fork to Leon, and then bad things had happened.

The brunette had wrapped his soft, pliant lips about the prongs and made a pleased sounding groan in the back of his throat. Practically vacuuming the luckiest fork in the known world, he had actually turned his stony gaze -which seemed at that moment to possess the burning intensity of a gazillion white-hot suns- and locked his grey with wide blue eyes, releasing the fork with an audible sucking sound before diligently and deliberately cleaning his lower lip of the speck of dressing marring that full, entrancing mouth… with his tongue.

At this stage, my eyes had probably fallen out of my head and were rolling feebly about the floor before being carted away by an army of dust-bunnies. However, unless my ears were deceiving me as badly as my eyes were, Cloud actually emitted a choked mewl, whilst torn in an epic internal struggle between tackling the brunette to the scummy linoleum tiles or fleeing the complex as if the very denizens of hell themselves were chasing him.

After much deliberation, he muttered a brief curse that was anything but child-friendly and legged it from the cafeteria, stubbornly refusing to surface for the rest of the lunch hour.

Leon's emotions flickered across his face in a matter of mere seconds: shock, to blind hurt, to disappointment, before settling on mild amusement, as he took up the dreaded 'Fork'™ and gradually began to consume the rest of Cloud's lovingly prepared salad, one hand still turning the pages of yet another book at regular intervals.

**END FLASHBACK**

* * *

"It's all about balance…" Leon stated, completely out of the blue. Being so unused to Leon actually speaking more than once in the space of an hour, I practically flinched so hard I leapt clear of my cheap, plastic chair. 

"Squall, it's a sandwich… symmetry doesn't make it taste any better…" Cloud replied dubiously, but I could already see the cogs turning in his warped little mind. Next Tuesday, every foodstuff in his menu would probably turn up cut into perfect, set-square measured cubes.

"Cloud, grow an attention-span or shut up." Leon concluded, leaving the blonde to sulkily defend and attack the arguments for each side of his ultimatum. "And don't call me Squall…" He added as a slightly irked afterthought. "I think she was trying to tell you that you could only, properly be whole when you reached a sort of equilibrium, you know, find the equivalent of light to your own darkness… or something…" He elucidated, then feigned absolute ignorance, stealing another bite of Cloud's sandwich before hiding his face in his book again.

"So… you mean like… Squall's moody and grumpy all the time, and I'm really hyper; so alone we're both pretty obnoxious… but we're better together?" Cloud asked; sounding eerily enlightened for once. He ruined the moment by giggling, completely oblivious that his comment had hit far too close to home, especially if Leon's sudden lack of respiratory activities acted as any sort of hint.

Fortunately, Sora took this moment to appear at our table, and I took the time to pray that he wasn't feeling as pissed off and slap-happy as he had in my dream. Leon exhaled noisily, and I felt obliged to let out a small sigh of relief as well.

"Meltdown averted; countdown cancelled with 0.09 seconds remaining…" I reeled off in my best electronic GPS navigator voice. Cloud merely giggled again, while Leon pinned me to my chair with a glare so intense I thought I'd pass out from the overwhelming stress.

"Should I come back at a better time?" He drawled, smirking evilly as I shot him a pleading look. At this point, even the residual humiliation of having my fine-looking arse bailed out by Sora of all people was preferable to death at the hands of a coldly infuriated Leon.

Hence, I leapt from my chair and flung my arms about the small brunette's legs, whimpering softly. Sora flushed to the roots of his gravity-defying hair and pretended to busy himself with counting every single light fixture on the ceiling. Even Leon had to crack a minute smile at our antics, while Cloud was practically doubled over with laughter.

"Highly masculine; and just as mature…" The blonde dictated stoically, before spoiling the skillfully delivered deadpan by cackling low in his throat.

"Hey, Riku can't help that he's missed me, can you boy?" Sora quipped through his adorable giggles, ruffling my perfectly set hair in a way that was likely to permanently damage my follicles in order to stop them from lying flat ever again. Enacting my own form of revenge, I purred my acquiescence and nuzzled into his thigh. Sora choked on thin air and begun to back-pedal furiously, tripping when I refused to relinquish his leg and landing flat on his ass.

"Sorry, I was feeling vulnerable and needy…" I explained, mixing a pinch of sarcasm with a convincingly sheepish smile. Sora merely made a disgruntled, anguished noise and gestured wildly to where we seemed to be surgically attached, so I released his leg with a wistful sigh. "I won't wait for ever, you know…" I murmured flirtatiously, thoroughly enjoying the way the poor boy's face flamed again. "So, where HAVE you been for the last few days?" I demanded suspiciously, when we'd both returned to our respective chairs.

"Well, you know I was stupidly busy at the weekend; I had to pretend I knew what the hell was going on in some play for some coursework I'd forgotten to hand in… THEN, I got a lunchtime detention yesterday, apparently for writing spur of the moment crap, so I actually had to read the WHOLE play in front of my teacher, just so he'd let me leave the classroom…" He declared morosely, wheeling out the pout that made me feel like the room was suddenly devoid of all oxygen.

"Aw, poor ickle Sora…" I cooed, interlocking my fingers and holding them to my cheek, "I had a mean old teacher like that once… I can't believe he actually wanted me to SUCCEED in my academic pursuits!" I cried out, tone excessively coloured with petulance. Leon hid an amused snicker behind his book as Cloud slapped the table with the flat of his hand, laughing so hard he had been reduced to wheezing pathetically.

"You know I could just as easily go back to Kairi, Yuffie and… Selphie…" His originally superior statement trailed off into nothingness as he shuddered at the prospect of returning to the girly table. I offered him a knowing, acerbic quirk of an eyebrow and he sighed in a long-suffering manner. "Fine, you'd have to pay me good money to go back there, but you should still appreciate me…" He sulked, folding his arms across his chest huffily before yelping and randomly attempting to conceal himself under the horrid, Formica table. Peering down, I noted with no small amount of annoyance that half of my meal had been magicked away into the void. Turning to face the 'girly table', I saw Kairi furiously attempting to wave us over and barely suppressed a shudder of my own. "Don't let them get meeee!" He wailed, words muffled and distorted by the presence of MY chicken salad baguette; whilst displaying the contents of his mouth, which I found as unnecessary as it was undesirable, before planting his chin in my lap as he turned the puppy-face in my general direction.

Suddenly, it felt like I'd run a marathon, so I hunched over, trying to force oxygen back into my lungs and regulate my elevate breathing whilst pushing Sora as far away from my crotch as was physically possible. Seeing as I was not in the best position for leverage, I ended up having to wrap my arms about the boy in the midst of a supreme wig-out session in order to heave him back topside. Placing the spiky-one daintily back in his chair, I sighed overdramatically.

"Freakish metabolism or not, boy; you're going to have to hit the gym and burn off some extra calories or my arms aren't going to survive the week…" I moaned bitterly, pretending to rub feeling back into my shoulders as Sora adopted an offended, dumbstruck expression. Truth be told, the brunette weighed about as much as a bag of all purpose flour, despite the fact that he ate more than nine times his own body weight a day.

However, regardless of how cute -albeit a little nauseating- it was to see him stuffing his pudgy little face, I did not forgive those who consumed MY food easily; and Sora had been stealing my meals since before we could string proper sentences together.

Then, everything seemed to go wrong; really, really fast…

"Are… are you saying I'm FAT?" Sora fairly shrieked, grabbing me by the collar and hauling me up to his eye-level, which led me to secretly resolve to enter the building tomorrow morning modeling the manliest pair of stilettos I could find, seeing as the kid was more than catching me up in the height stakes, and I wasn't due another growth spurt for another two damned years.

"Awww… honey, that's not what I meant at all… You know how much I adore you and your love handles…" I retorted in a placating, soothing tone, although the sentence was just as audible as its predecessor. My face betrayed no residual emotion, none that would give me and the game away, which I delightedly noticed as we were getting more than a few stares.

"Well… my love handles hate you, so HA!" Sora grinned at his witty comeback, although his face fell shortly after as he realized his words were neither witty nor a comeback.

"Well, your chubby little bottom still seems rather fond of me, so I'll just have to hold onto that, ne?" I asked devilishly, smirking wider as I noticed the liquid fury in the brunette's sky-blue eyes.

Leon was directing a blatant scowl my way, practically screaming at me to run before I went too far and ended up brutally murdered with jagged fragments of plastic cutlery. Just to spite him, I slowly looped my arms about Sora's waist, only relinquishing my sappy embrace to draw back a hand and spank the humiliated boy across said aforementioned chubby-cheeks, cackling as he shrieked in indignation.

Cloud, on the other hand, while still breathing with no little difficulty, seemed to be rooting for the 'happy couple', yelling out through hysterical laughter:

"Go, Chubba-Wubba! Shake that fat ass and win back your man!"

At this point, I almost died laughing, possibly due to the combination of 'Chubba-Wubba' and the consequent undiluted rage it sparked on Sora's stunned and pouting face.

"What was that, Cloud?" I called back; alluding to deafness as the tiny brunette began to shake, barely suppressing his ire by convulsively clenching his hands into tight fists. "You think me and Jabba the Butt should go 'make-up'… and out, in the janitor's closet?" I asked, batting my eyelashes coquettishly as Sora let out an animalistic roar.

The next thing I knew, I was on the icky floor, with a skinny brunette plastered along the length of my body, looking ready to throttle me with the Velcro straps on his frighteningly colossal shoes. It was really, really difficult to avert my eyes from his dilated pupils and heaving chest, but somehow I managed it, praise be to my awesome will power.

"Riku…" He growled, spreading his legs to effectively pin me to the ground with his thighs. Ooh, sexual gratification from my best male friend… what a dream come true. Sarcasm: terminated...

"Oh, I'm sorry baby; did you want to be on top today?" I practically purred, flexing my hips as I arched closer into his restraining hands.

Sora let out a stunned, breathy whimper, and then bolted off me faster than a startled deer, emitting a supersonic, inhuman wail of absolute terror before sprinting clumsily from the canteen.

Leaping gracefully to my feet, I retook my uncomfortable seat, chuckling slightly as Leon looked at me with a morbid sort of curiosity. Cloud would have congratulated me, had his frame not been so racked by sniggers and guffaws, but he managed to give me a brusque high-five before attending to the tears that had come unbidden to his electric blue eyes.

Those eyes were eerily familiar, but I hadn't been able to place them, a thought that had been niggling at the edges of my brain since we met. As Leon pinched the bridge of his nose, no doubt to stave off the Riku-induced migraine, everything clicked into place.

Cloud and Sora seemed to share more than just a hairstyle; their eyes, not to mention their exuberance, also seemed to match. In fact, Sora also seemed to possess Leon's hair colour, lean frame and anger management issues. It was almost horrifying at how easily my mind would accept such similar characteristics from both parties and then blend them so seamlessly together.

If someone told me that Cloud had magically grown ovaries one fateful evening, and he and Leon had gotten drunk, and one thing had led to another, and another had led to a lovechild, I'd point to Sora without needing to be prompted.

"So, what was the screaming finale about?" Cloud finally managed to ask when he'd recovered from his bout of hysterics.

"Oh… that was code…" I answered nonchalantly, stealing a sip of Leon's bottled water as he looked too stressed to wrestle it from my cold, dead hands. "It means that I've got to wait here for another five minutes before joining him in the closet, so no one gets suspicious." I concluded, wearing what I had dubbed: Riku's omniscient, godly smirk. Cloud sniggered slightly as Leon dog-eared a page and finally gave up on his reading, seeing as he was now far too hopelessly distracted with subduing a giggly Cloud and glaring at yours truly.

I glanced at the pair again in fascination, as both seemed to be wearing Sora's favourite expressions simultaneously. Suffice to say, it was really, really weird…

"What are you staring at now?" Leon demanded snippily, running a hand through his hair, which served as a telltale sign that he was stressed, rundown and highly uncomfortable.

"Oh, nothing much, just designing your future offspring in my head…" I answered, feigning disinterest as I suddenly found my fingernails scintillating specimens of perpetual amusement. "He has your eyes." I giggled to Cloud as Leon seemed to go into coronary arrest. The two sixth formers instantaneously turned to the other, confusion, abhorrence and intrigue warring for dominance on their faces as I continued to laugh.

As if coming to a silent agreement, Leon reverentially handed Cloud his hardback, which the blonde accepted with a beautifully soft, grateful smile. He then proceeded to bludgeon me about the head with the damned thing.

"Heeeey!" I shouted, attempting to shield my battered cranium from the psycho, club-wielding maniac formally known as Cloud Strife. "It's not like I said your kids were going to be ugly! The one I was thinking of was kinda cute… if you go all in for the whole, cherubic, wide-eyed, chubby-bottomed thing…"

"Oh god, Riku… that's just WRONG!" Cloud retorted noisily, screwing his eyes shut as if it'd help to cut off the torrent of hideous visions that were assaulting his mind.

"But, Cloud, sweetheart, you glowed…" Leon deadpanned, resulting in Cloud and I freezing in unison.

"Did he just say what I think he said?" I asked in perturbed wonderment as the blonde's skin suddenly darkened to vermillion.

"Why do I have to be the one with the womb?" He sulked, raising his voice to a nasal whine that was strangely reminiscent of nails on a chalk board. "It's not FAIR Leon… I'm the oldest, so you should be the girl…" He pouted, shooting a glare my way as I had begun to sputter at the 'womb' comment.

"Cloud, darling, I thought we'd gotten over your 'toy-boy' issues, just as I managed to deal with the jealousy spawned from your feminine wiles and voluptuous curves." Leon retorted smugly, actually treating us to a smile that involved the usage of facial muscles as the poor blonde gaped at being described as so delectably rounded.

"But… but… his hair! Imagine the havoc those spikes would wreak on my uterus!" Cloud defended childishly, before realising that he'd actually unintentionally admitted that he was a clandestine hermaphrodite. "And don't flatter yourself; Squall… the age-gap is a year; hardly wide enough for you to be a 'toy-boy'." The blonde highlighted snottily, folding his arms across his chest as he turned up his nose with all the arrogance and condescension he could muster.

"You'd prefer it if I was any younger?" Leon asked, feigning disbelief, "I never knew you wanted to be a paedophile when you grew up!" He cried exuberantly, which was creepy in itself, regardless of the nature of their conversation, as an excitable Leon was about as natural as a Selphie who could stay still.

"Very funny, Squall, but I doubt an impotent child could have knocked me up!" Cloud practically screamed back, getting progressively angrier with each giggle that came from Leon's end of the table. I simply stared, open-mouthed and astonished, eyes flickering between the two like a spectator following a ball in a tennis rally.

"Ooh, a paternity suit… should I call up Oprah? I hear business has slowed since the 'sofa' incident." A high-pitched, girlish voice suddenly interrupted, causing the three of us to wrench our heads violently towards its origin, whilst trying to avert our eyes guiltily when we recognized the perpetrator.

"Hi… Yuffie… how're you doing?" Cloud asked, feigning nonchalance with an equally strained noncommittal shrug.

"Oh, you know me, same old, same old…" The female wannabe-ninja replied affably, grinning somewhat demonically as Cloud blushed hard enough to burst blood vessels. "But enough about me, young man, how could you keep your big news a secret from your bestest materia loving friend in the whole wide world?" She queried, feigning hurt as Cloud glared accusingly at the floor, like it was the linoleum's fault that he hadn't yet been swallowed up by the earth.

"Cos I only got the good news myself three minutes ago…" The blonde muttered acrimoniously as Yuffie clapped a hand over her smirk to stifle her laughter.

"We thought we'd better let him back in the loop when Riku noticed that he'd started to show." Leon clarified with one of his patented smirks, leaving Yuffie to sigh dreamily whilst mentally cursing the fact that the teenager was figuratively spoken for.

"I just wondered what the little tyke was gonna look like." I fairly squealed, doing my damnedest to make my eyes light up with innocent inquisitiveness.

"Girl or boy?" She demanded mischievously in return.

"Boy." Both parents-to-be answered, Leon's tone putting across as much amusement as Cloud's carried despair.

"Oh, that's easy then… you'll have a mini-Sora on your hands, mark my words." She chirped through a grin that seemed to horizontally cleave her face in two. Leon chuckled deeply again as Cloud began the tried and true method of bashing his brains out against the Formica surface of the sticky table.


	2. Chapter One

**A/N:** _Well, here we are! Another chapter, and it's even LONGER than the first one! Yay me! I'd like to thank everyone muchly for the reviews and faves, you really made my day! And I was having a really sucky day, so that just makes you more special-er... I lost 3,000 words of this chapter, failed a driving test and then had to take some serious exams, which rather... sucked... Oh, wait, I'm babbling again, sorry! Hope everyone enjoys this chapter, especially -**bladegryphon**-, -**bob the builder**- and -**AXENATOR**-! Thanks so much for reviewing, it makes me so happy, so this one's for you! Woo! (feel free to disown said chapter if it is lousy, lol) (EDIT: Oops... wrong chapter number... so embarrassed...)__

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**WARNINGS:**_  
1). For those of you who are unfamiliar with Dante's Divine Comedy, a contropasso is a punishment that has been constructed to be an opposite course of action in regard to the sin committed. The Violent, as mentioned below, were either submerged in a boiling river of blood, or forced to walk through an arid desert where it rained fire. Cheerful stuff, eh? Meh, at least it shows that Leon's well read... (huggles intelligent Leon, who attacks rabid fan-girl)  
2). Believe it or not, ALL of the My Little Pony references are genuine, as I was sad enough to actually go researching. Originally, I was going to compare Cloud's name with a Care Bear, but that just didn't seem creepy and twisted enough, lol.  
3). There is trolley-theft in this chapter... I do not endorse the stealing of shopping carts, for I do not wish to be arrested.  
4). There is also a small smidgen of PLOT DEVELOPMENT! (gasps)  
5). Slight spoilers for FFVIII, but I've changed things around a bit, so it shouldn't be too bad._

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**DISCLAIMER:** Don't own Kingdom Hearts, or anything else that is consequent property of Square-Enix or Disney. I also do not own My Little Pony, the Divine Comedy, or Dance Dance Revolution (although I am rather good at it, despite lacking all the necessary grace to dance, woot!). I do, however, own the tentacle sandwich... Just kidding...

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**Chapter One: What's in a name?**

Once we had finally managed to restrain the thrashing, uncooperative lunatic formerly known as Cloud; a fairly difficult and chaotic task -especially when our efforts really weren't facilitated by Leon's acerbic comments- interspersed with primal screams of struggle and pain, an awkward silence descended as I half sprawled, half exhaustedly fell across the seat of my chair.

Yuffie sighed deeply whilst attempting to smooth the wispy, statically charged strands of her dark hair back into some semblance of order, seeing as the majority of said aforementioned raven tresses were standing at such illogical, gravity-defying levels as to challenge Cloud's, which was really saying something, for at this moment, the blonde looked like he'd jammed a knife into a faulty toaster.

"So…" The blonde barely managed to wheeze into comprehensible English, "What brings you to our neck of the woods?" He cheerily directed the question to the ninja, who had gratefully collapsed onto the seat recently vacated by the pudgy baby-to-be.

Upon noticing her dishevelled state, as she was furiously scrubbing at a suspiciously maroon stain that marred the surface of her habitual khaki shorts, the blonde blushed by way of repentance, and winced rather viscerally when he craned his neck to survey the damage done to his other captor. Judging by said facial expression, the blood was mine, resultant from a vicious wound, which was also a direct consequence of that wanton, flailing elbow to the face.

Apparently, he'd also heard Leon's muttered: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here", tacked on to the end of his question, what with the fact that he was giving his compatriot a glare heated enough to melt glass.

"And which particular contropasso do you think would suit?" I drawled, wearing an amused, self-satisfied smirk to convey that I was probably the only one at the confines of the horrid little table who didn't think that the quote had been taken from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney.

"Sometimes I think I'd go mad without you…" Leon chuckled, wrapping his deceptively silken hands about the spine of his book.

"Cantos… twelve through… seventeen… I think…" I simpered, tilting my head towards the hardback as the brunette scanned the index. I had to admit that I was thoroughly enjoying the blonde's unmasked jealousy and the self-proclaimed kleptomaniac's utter befuddlement.

"I assume that we can safely remove the profligates and suicides?" He asked slyly, also deriving some sadistic pleasure from holding his considerable knowledge just out of the others' reach.

Initially, I had been surprised that the entire student body hadn't persecuted the pair of us for our closeted intellects and… well… general nerdery, if I'm going to be brutally honest; until Selphie blithely informed me that being both book-smart and snappy dressers somehow elevated us to some sort of godlike status.

She said that the various masteries of martial disciplines and the unadulterated hotness also weren't damaging our chances with any gender we chose to flirt shamelessly with. Then again, Selphie was of a mind that I'd look good in drag, so her opinion wasn't all that trustworthy…

"Leaving us with ample selective choice between physical violence unto others…" I trailed off, curving my lips into a malevolently fiendish grin. "And sodomy." I concluded sweetly, ducking neatly to avoid the projectile flash-flood that was Leon spitting out his mineral water at a velocity nearing the speed of sound.

"Well, originally I was sent here as some sort of messenger, but then the recipient of said message went hurtling out through those doors like Riku was about to self-destruct in T-minus five seconds." Yuffie elucidated as to the reason behind her sudden presence, effectively answering Cloud's earlier question that no doubt the blonde had already forgotten he'd asked.

I nodded gratefully to the coltish girl, highly appreciative that she had distracted Leon from… well… doing murders on me with a cheap plastic chair.

"Just protecting the chaste virtue of my sammich." I shrugged nonchalantly, looking sadly to the decimated remains of my meal. What Sora had actually left, most likely due to the fact that even his mouth could only contain so much, as opposed to out of the goodness of his noble little heart, was rather pathetic looking, seeing as even the lettuce had curled up at the edges, in order to droop rather limply to the bacteria-infested surface of the table. "Which is now no longer fit for human consumption…" I sighed, disgustedly pushing my lunch away with me, feeling paranoid enough to make sure I was out of the general tentacle-grab radius, as I was of more than half a mind that genetic mutation was now inevitable, as opposed to a nightmarish impossibility.

"I'd be more worried about the wrath of one creepy-possessive redhead. I think she'd kill you quicker than salmonella could…" Yuffie laughed, somewhat cruelly, as I didn't believe a little harmless, albeit slightly sexual fun warranted death doled out with oodles of prejudice. "I'm pretty sure the poor boy'll turn up in class with her name gouged into his forehead with a protractor…" She chuckled, apparently mentally entertaining the image of a cowering, branded Sora.

"First of all, for there is more than one flaw to your argument: Knowing Kairi so implicitly, I'd be more prepared to stake my claim on the murder weapon being a compass, seeing as I'm an expert medical witness or whatnot. Secondary evidence comes in the form of it being pretty much physically impossible to inscribe initials into a person's head with something circular; doesn't have any hard, jagged edges, which makes scratching unnecessarily difficult." I stated haughtily, curling my fingers around my chin to portray the look of the pensive detective elite.

"Not to mention the fact that obnoxious, scrawny little boys no longer fall under the sacred rights of property." Leon smirked condescendingly, chalking up another scholarly point against me. We had a quirky sort of rivalry, it was all so cerebral that I sometimes had to doubt if it actually existed.

"You two really need to get some hobbies…" Cloud drawled, effectively cutting off my inhaled breath that had been fated to transform into a petulantly articulate tirade about the various facts, figures and facets of the slave trade.

"Debate is a hobby." Leon shot back, still occasionally skimming through Purgatory whenever the conversation had become too 'lowbrow' to hold his interest.

"Fine… the pair of you need to find some readily accessible hobbies." The blonde sighed melodramatically, furrowing his golden brows as if to convey some sense of eternal suffering.

"I suppose you mean to suggest something along the lines of blitz-ball?" Leon demanded derisively, crinkling up his angular nose at the prospect of the abhorrent sport.

"Ooh… I can already feel the excitement… What did such an activity entail again? Oh… wait… I remember: Catch ball, punt ball into net, participate in general gang-violence, don't drown." I mimicked the orientation speech acerbically, of course delivering the little pep-talk using my own delicate spin on the situation, occasionally flailing closed fists about my general head area in poorly feigned euphoria.

Yuffie snickered childishly at Cloud's crestfallen expression, while Leon's smirk merely mirrored my own.

"So, what are you gonna name Junior?" The Great Ninja asked out of the blue, obviously upon having recognised the hints that our conversation was quickly turning into an all out 'gang-up on poor, stupid Cloud' free-for-all.

"I'd like to hope that you'd stick with apparent tradition and go for something meteorologically based." I grinned wickedly, the tendrils of a truly devilish, half-formed idea already brushing at the back of my mind. "Maybe some sort of precipitation?"

"Huh?" Cloud asked, eloquent as ever.

"Squalls and clouds are both terms associated with the weather… didn't you notice?" Yuffie asked, modelling an expression of confusion and mild horror at Cloud's oblivious, vacant visage.

"A squall is like a string of thunderstorms in a positively homicidal mood. Lightning strikes as furious gusts of wind buffet everything in range, sometimes it hails, sometimes there's a downpour… hell, sometimes there are tornadoes…" I clarified excitedly, tenaciously seizing the opportunity to play teacher. "Clouds are formed from collected water vapour, and they are puffy and white, like marshmallows! There are many types of cloud, including cirrus, cumulonimbus and-"

"I know what a bloody cloud is!" The blonde defended huffily, pouting like a child ready to throw a temper tantrum. Perhaps I went too far by taking out a notepad and doodling a toddler's rendition of said weather phenomenon… then again, the final straw was probably the square house with rectangle door, triangle roof and lame-ass chimney puffing merrily away.

Either that or my Cloud stick-figure getting zapped by lightning coming from the cloud with the grumpy face… I completed my masterpiece with a large, jagged speech bubble containing the woeful words: Oh noes!

"For you, sir." I giggled, handing over the loosely termed artwork to Leon, who folded the piece of paper carefully and slipped it into his copy of the Divine Comedy, effectively finding a way to prevent it from creasing whilst discovering a makeshift bookmark simultaneously.

"I always thought Leon's name was just some dodgy form of shorthand for 'Squalor'…" Cloud suddenly announced in wide-eyed wonderment, much to Squall's apparent chagrin. Yuffie and I had to hold on to each other's shoulders to prevent slipping off our respective crappola chairs and land in a chaotic torrent of shaking limbs and laughter.

"Heh… Shorthand synonymous with filth and destitution aside, I'd definitely prefer 'Squalor' to a nickname for a My Little Pony, 'Cloud Puff'." Leon hissed dangerously, which only served to set the pair of us off again, resulting in the gangly ninja to plummet the short distance to the linoleum, landing hard on her ass with a mixture between an agonised squeal and a guffaw.

"Oh god… I feel like a kid in a candy store… which lame sex joke should I tell first?" I asked Yuffie, who was now rolling about on the floor, in between puerile snickers.

"Hmm… maybe something about 'riding'…" She suggested, waggling her eyebrows with no real subtlety.

"Why the hell does my pony sound like a frikkin' porn star?" Cloud demanded furiously, although his sulkiness was rather spoiled by the fact that I could practically feel the warmth radiating from his blushing.

"You're better off than Banana Surprise…" Leon replied ominously. I managed to stifle my laughter momentarily, in order to look at the clueless Cloud without going cross-eyed.

"How is that dirty? It's fruit! Fruit!" He shrieked indignantly.

"Well…I'm afraid I'm going to have to be blunt about this… but,the 'banana' is what makes the 'cloud puffs', okay?" I clarified; making sure my enunciation was clear and painfully slow, as if I were giving the lecture 'bout the 'birds and the bees' to a child with all the sensibility of someone who chased swans with brittle sticks.

Upon witnessing the abject look of mind-boggling terror that had just graced Cloud's contorted face, even Leon had to hide a snort behind his hand.

"You're all sick, twisted perverts, the lot of you!" The blonde screeched, clamping his hands down over his ears, as if the action could stifle further traumatic explanations from becoming interpretable.

"So, Squall, or should I start calling you 'cowboy' now?" I addressed the still smirking Leon, who was at this moment in a forgiving mood, probably due to the connotation that came with the mention of riding 'Cloud Puff'. "Should you be telling me about some incident in your repressed childhood that led you to a My Little Pony compulsion?" I concluded my query with a fake, cheesy grin as Leon's eyes narrowed to mere slits.

"They belong to my little sister, who happens to be five…" He stated blandly, which pretty much killed all further potential for a mocking diatribe. "If a certain pony, with a purple, tinsel-filled mane and iridescent wings just happened to call to me while I was foraging for a birthday present for the little she-devil, what right have you to mock me for fulfilling my brotherly duties to the best of my ability?" He asked, resulting in a ricochet effect that also left the conversation in its entirety stone dead.

"Technically, we were mocking Cloud instead." Yuffie pointed out helpfully.

"Then I have no further qualms with your behaviour." Leon smirked wickedly, leaning forward to fondly pat the Great Ninja's head like a master would caress the silky coat of a loyal pet that'd just fetched his slippers, papers and pipe.

-_When the hell had she gotten back on the chair?-_

"Does Elle actually know that you went out and bought an anthropomorphised, plastic pal modelled after yours truly?" Cloud demanded sulkily, putting up an indignant front, as if maintaining his irritation at the former comments of utter perversion. I was pretty sure that he was actually more vexed by the fact that he was the one taking the ribbing for the team while Yuffie was the one receiving the affectionate hair ruffling from He Who Must Not Have Physical Contact… Ever…

Leon looked up to the neon strip lighting, expression close to something rivalling complete disbelief, while Yuffie turned to peer through the large windows gracing the far wall of the cafeteria, having adopted a similarly evoked response of incredulity.

"I don't SEE any pigs…" The girl announced sceptically, which resulted in me having to sink my teeth into my knuckles to stifle another burst of hysterics.

"And what is that supposed to mean?" The pouty blonde questioned suspiciously, his narrowed gaze flickering between the other occupants of the table.

"Well, I didn't think you even knew that there WERE five syllable words… outside of the stuff of fable and legend, of course; let alone ones containing more than ten letters." Yuffie replied snidely, leering contemptuously at the silently fuming Cloud. "I was checking the skies… you know… for flying pigs." She clarified saccharinely, beaming mischievously, as the only response Cloud could summon up was a rather violent looking twitch.

"Wow… do you think he knows Morse Code as well?" I queried shrewdly, internally counting out the dots and dashes that signified each jerked facial muscle.

"If that's the case, then that first, heaven-sent sign shouldn't be too far off…" Leon answered amusedly, never taking his eyes from the ceiling during the entire exchange.

"What, is god finally gonna come through with that IOU? His divine hand parting the heavens to reach down and sheepishly offer Cloud that brain he always wanted?" I giggled, in a highly appealing, masculine manner, I swear…

"I thought that was the Wizard of Oz?" Yuffie butted in smugly, which of course led to a Munchkin rendition of 'Follow the Yellow Brick Road' and further rabid cackling at the blonde's expense.

"Don't make me have to beg for that Apocalypse…" Leon groaned, seemingly even more unwilling and averse to playing responsible adult than usual. "And I don't know why you're laughing, Ellone's renamed a Pony after each and every one of you, so you're in no way exempt from the humiliation." He grunted, deciding that at least by siding with Cloud, we'd stop singing like chipmunks on both helium and crack.

"Ooh! Which one am I?" Yuffie clapped excitedly, no doubt imagining that her Pony/Porn star name could kick several shades of crap out of Cloud's.

"Kimono…" Leon muttered as a reply, which consequently brought about more ecstatic squealing.

"See! I have a ninja-Pony, not some pathetic little plastic-prostitute!" She crowed, sort of dementedly, seeing as I had previously doubted that anyone could be proud of having a bimbo/farmyard-animal equivalent.

"It has paper lanterns on its synthetic ass…" Leon elucidated further, seeming thoroughly amused by the prospect of taking the scrawny girl down a peg or five.

"And Cloud Puff?" She shot back brazenly.

"What appears to be a smiley-faced globule of semen." The stoic brunette answered easily, the corner of his lips quirking upwards. I prayed to every god I had ever heard of that I hadn't pissed him off the day Ellone decided she wanted a Riku-Pony.

"How's about everyone just calm down, okay?" I fairly begged; using the magical power of foresight to pre-empt that the canteen was about ready to be transformed into a battle-scene. "If we're going to be hideously petty, Yuffie's geisha-Pony is just a higher class of whore, which really makes me wonder as to how these toys are approved for use by small children…" I pondered aloud, curling back my upper lip in distaste.

Unfortunately, the situation hadn't been diffused by my words, as they only served to act as a prompt for Yuffie to slug me. Cloud proceeded to snicker like a child…

_-Bitch..._-

"So, what's Riku's porn star name?" The blonde snickered, pointedly averting his eyes from my Squall-patented death glare.

"Elle dragged me to practically every toy-store in town before she was able to find something suitably fitting." Leon sighed impatiently as I puffed up with pride. I couldn't help it, I just adored that kid, she was so… dare I say it: cute! "Well, I guess it's not that much of a problem, she's always eager for you to take her off my hands." Ah, an ulterior motive, Leon was exploiting my weakness for spoiling Ellone. I wish I had unquestioning slave labour too… "However, buying the affections of small, fickle children with sugar-infusions whenever you think my back is turned is a double-edged sword; she's decided that you're going to marry her." He chuckled, enjoying the way my already pale skin went ashen.

"If I find the police at my door, poking their noses into accusations about paedophilia, I will hunt you down and set you on fire." I growled threateningly, throwing surly glares at the now giggling trio.

_-Stupid, traitorous Yuffie…-_

"Whatever… Savannah Sage…" Leon smothered a chortle by biting into his lower lip, as Cloud followed suit and practically fell off his chair.

Stupid Cloud and his equally stupid mood-swings… not two minutes ago he'd been churlish enough for me to genuinely believe he was channelling Squall.

Seeing as I desperately needed to become sidetracked, because who honestly wanted to know that they had a plastic Mini-Me called Sunset Stripper or whatever, I entertained the fine line that divided 'ice princess' Cloud and 'air-headed bouncy' Cloud.

Sometimes, I wondered if the blonde was bipolar or just plain weird… I mean, suddenly he'd clam up, not say two words in as many hours, then suddenly stalk furiously away, seeking solitude and a potential punching-bag. Then, as quickly as the lone wolf had appeared on the scene, he was back to jumping about like he was made of Flubber or something, impulsively following his mercurial nature, usually into headache territory for Squall.

* * *

Like that time he'd joined Leon and Laguna in a father/son bonding trip to the supermarket… It was quite safe to say that Squall had inherited next to nothing from his ditzy, happy-go-lucky dad, which Leon was eternally grateful for, but such polar differences often resulted in conflict. 

Leon's role model of sorts hadn't been the greatest of successes as a parent, possibly due to the fact that Squall had exceeded and surpassed Laguna's maturity levels at around age six.

Where Squall was eloquent and soft-spoken, Laguna was brash, crude, and seemed to hold some sort of vendetta against the English language. Leon was dedicated, persevering and resolute, Laguna had an attention span rivalling that of a brain damaged goldfish.

Hence, under the pretext of a father/son outing, Squall's mother, the long-suffering, possibly masochistic, Raine, had sent her son out to effectively supervise her husband.

Apparently, the last time Laguna had been allowed to shop unaided, he had returned with a trolley full of Rocky Road and Fruit Loops, and two severely winded officers of the law.

Laguna had forgotten to give the trolley back, and having completed his supermarket sweep, had dashed out of the car park, practically sprinting (and riding on the back of the speeding trolley at intervals) the three lengthy miles back to the Loire family home.

The custodians of said trolley hadn't exactly been predisposed to be lenient even before Laguna took off running, blithely oblivious to his surroundings, as was the norm, but Raine had managed to avoid the prospect of prosecution by innocently announcing that her husband was… 'disturbed'…

The security guards hadn't felt the inclination to protest such a claim, as Laguna had turned around, as if only just realising they were there, to wave exuberantly to two random strangers as if they'd been friends all their lives.

Leading us to an unforgettable vista, with Squall virtually crushing the shopping list in one gloved hand, while wielding the basket in the other like an offensive weapon because Cloud had just convinced his father that it would be oh-so-much-'funner' if they did something utterly unconstructive.

Leon was abandoned, seething with barely restrained rage, for the arcade, where the pair of irresponsible 'adults', although only in the eyes of the law, of all things, were all but booed out of the arcade by the Dance Dance Revolution machine.

This was easily explainable, seeing as although Laguna was rather spry, he was also in his mid-forties, and was about as coordinated as a cinder block on cardboard wheels, mounted on balsa wood axels, all of which being inundated in syrup.

Cloud, on the other hand, was in his prime, and was pretty damned nubile when the mood took him. However, he had not a single musical bone in his body, and therefore had all the rhythmic inclination of a deaf man.

* * *

"-iku! Riku? Wake up man!" Yuffie shouted; barely a hair's breadth away from my abused ear. 

"Er… sorry about that, I was miles away…" I dismissed any further concerned attention with a bored flick of the wrist.

"Excuse us for being concerned… you looked like you'd gone into mortification-induced catatonia." Cloud snorted, making his irritation abundantly clear. His air of indifference mutated into a displeased scowl when Yuffie began to peruse the skies again for airborne swine.

"What were you thinking about, anyway?" Leon questioned, seemingly nonchalant and uninterested.

"Oh, this and that… Came up with the perfect baby name while I was at it…" I purred out the statement, smirking arrogantly as the blonde choked on nothingness as I mentioned his dreaded offspring.

"Which would be?" Yuffie demanded eagerly, teetering on the edge of her chair as I continued to grin malevolently.

"Puddle." I declared smugly. The name hung in the stagnant air, awkward silence tightened about the table like a vacuum. Then Yuffie burst into uproarious laughter and Cloud's callused, powerful hands closed about my throat.

* * *

After some lengthily drawn out, painful moments, order had been restored to the land of psychopathic maniacs with unfeasible hairstyles, by which I mean Leon pried Cloud's fingers from where they were doing a pretty darned good job of choking me; albeit grudgingly, seeing as I severely doubted that the stone cold brunette had any love whatsoever for such a horrendous baby name. 

However, I wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth, as I'd actually been more than slightly worried during that little fiasco, what with the edges of my vision blurring and the floor changing colours at irregular intervals. I was of more than half a mind to magically locate a crowbar, and my indecision only stemmed from whether I was going to use it to lever those crushing fingers from my bruised windpipe or to club the bastard about the head with the damned thing.

I must have looked a right state to the rest of the student body, elliptical fingerprints tattooed into the soft, alabaster skin of my throat, the bloodied nose, which had better not be broken, unless Cloud fancied spending the remainder of his wretched existence eating through a straw.

Huh… maybe I'd been wrong about the pair of them… perhaps Leon was the merciful ice princess and the blonde was the one with neuroses and anger management issues coming out the wazoo... who'd a thunk it?

Suddenly, a telltale flash of hideously gaudy colour streaked across my vision. Ploughing his ridiculously oversized feet, which only served to remind me that he probably would end up as the taller party –o_h, how I wished for the days of last year where our heights were virtually separated by a clear foot_- into the obsessively polished floors in the large hallway that portentously led to what seemed to be a disciplinary hearing in the making; Sora pivoted to face me, blushing lightly as he nigh instantaneously broke eye contact and began to stare at said clown feet, which were now scuffing the janitor's pride and joy.

"Hi… Riku…" He murmured, apparently torn as to how to act around me. I guessed that his caution was perfectly understandable, I mean, I'd flirted shamelessly with the once-diminutive tyke and he'd jumped my sexy bones. Not that his response had initially been of a sensual nature, but that gasping whine that had escaped his strangled throat would be burnt into my brain for the rest of eternity.

"Yo! You here for the lecture-come-threat-fest as well, Puddle Senior?" I asked cheerfully, although internally I was quailing like a schoolgirl… Truth be told, Professor Highwind scared the living daylights out of me, and with good reason; the man could make the simple act of inviting someone to a cup of tea sound like a blatant threat… a threat that promised pain and suffering and no artificial sweeteners.

However, I wasn't allowed any further time to dwell on just how good old Cid made me want to curl up in the corner of a darkened room and never return to society, seeing as Cloud had lunged at me again, no doubt for insulting his demon spawn.

Squall again came to my rescue, like a surly, leather-clad metal-head sent by god himself, as he effectively pinned Cloud's arms to his torso with his own, hefting the shorter blonde into the air, where he kicked and squirmed ineffectually.

I think I now respect Leon more than I had previously thought was possible.

While he was significantly taller than his captive, he was slight and restricted to a less dense overall muscle tone. Cloud, on the other hand, was stockier, though still also pretty darned skinny now that I think about it, and probably weighed more than Leon did for all his comparative lack of height. Yet still, the brunette was holding him aloft about the middle, seemingly unfazed, when I had half suspected that his arms would snap like brittle twigs.

"Yeah… turns out that even if I apply myself, I'm still pretty damned shocking at English." Sora grinned sheepishly. "I take it you're in for…" He trailed off awkwardly, making a circular gesture towards his own face.

"Dead on… I'm beginning to suspect that Mr. Sunshine over there didn't ingest his happy pills like a good little schizophrenic." I fairly snarled, because, regardless of taking a joke too far, even if it was as hypothetical as it was physically impossible, I hadn't been the one who tried to throttle a supposed friend.

"I have no idea how I'm going to talk my way out of this, spin doctor or not…" Leon growled, glaring harsh reprimands to the pair of us for dragging him down as we sank. "How the hell can you just… lie away the fact that you've been committing lewd, promiscuous acts in a place where FOOD is served?" He demanded, coming as close to losing his temper as I'd ever seen. I'd never witnessed a Leon not in full, tightly reined control of his emotions, and the fact that we'd pushed him so far almost frightened me. "And YOU…" He pointed an accusing finger to his best friend, who all but cowered away from the icy fire in the brunette's eyes after struggling out of his grasp. "You've subjected the little twit to so much head trauma today that I'll never be able to converse on obscure themes and topics ever again! Not to mention the fact that you ALMOST KILLED HIM!" He roared, glare barely softening when Cloud whimpered fearfully and began to furiously back-pedal. "I am surrounded by half-wits and buffoons!" He cried, just for the hell of it, seeing as he was pretty sure we'd been causing a scandalous scene for well over our allocated lunch period. "And, apparently illiterates…" He sneered, directing the remainder of his annoyance to Sora, who turned to me with a: 'What the hell did I do and how do I make him stop looking at me like that?' sort of expression.

I merely shrugged nonchalantly, whilst in awe of the little brunette's ability to convey such sentiment by simply widening his cerulean eyes and grimacing.

"I just… I was just so damned angry, Squall!" Cloud cried suddenly, seemingly having rediscovered his spine. "I mean… I don't care if my name does sound like that of a plastic pony porn star… but… your name is special… Raine never even thought she'd get to meet you, let alone hold you and watch you grow up! She took so much time deliberating on what they were gonna call you… and when she decided, it just 'fit', you know? Your name is unique and special, and PUDDLE just seems to demean it… It's as reminiscent of new age hippy crap as my name is, and that's not fair!" The blonde exclaimed passionately, looking like he was nearing tears.

Sora looked as awkward as I felt, and I was really itching to run far, far away from Cloud practically confessing his feelings… In a public hallway… In a school… In full view of the student body…

"First off, it's Leon… Secondly, you thought my name was an abbreviation of… yes, I believe it was 'Squalor', not too long ago… and thirdly, you're not pregnant, you silly twit." Squall chastised, pretending that he was possibly even more embarrassed by the incident than we were.

I doubt he was fooling anyone though, as for a split second, a broad, genuine smile that actually exposed teeth bloomed on the boy's habitually sullen face. I suddenly felt restricted to a base, childish level where all I could petulantly demand was: Again! Again!

"It's the principle of the thing!" The blonde laughed, diffusing the gravitas with a finesse one would never consciously associate with Cloud of all people. "And I'm not a silly twit… I'm just… selectively academic…" He all but lied through his teeth.

"Then why do you seem to favour being selectively as thick as two short planks so much?" Leon teased affectionately, and was rewarded with a pouting, scowling blonde, which even I had to admit presented a rather cute image.

I turned to Sora, who also seemed inclined to hang back as the pair made their way to Cid's office. It was rather bizarre, seeing a completely different side of their relationship, and that pricelessly rare smile had almost made me weak at the knees.

"Am I dreaming, or did that really just happen?" Sora questioned suspiciously, and I could hardly find fault with his query.

"I think it actually did… or we're both suffering mass-delusions…" I chuckled, regardless of my aching head and the way my throat seemed too constricted to allow facilitated breathing. "Who knows, Squall may have flipped his lid and we could be drowning in pools of our own blood?" I suggested affably, smiling harder when Sora blanched before swiftly adopting a nauseously green tinge to his tanned face.

"Far too much information…" He shuddered, wheeling out the almighty pout when my laughter refused to cease.

"I'm sorry too, you know… about earlier, I didn't mean to embarrass you like that…" I mumbled, seeing as I was Riku, and Riku didn't DO apologies. The gangly brunette suddenly turned on his megawatt grin and giggled in a rather pleased manner.

"And why should I forgive you, Mr. Big-shot?" He wheedled, knowing he was treading on dangerously thin ice. If I were feeling benevolent, he'd get a brusque, manly hug with superfluous amounts of back slapping and I'd promise to buy him dinner; if I were feeling vindictive, I'd probably pinch him for his audacity.

"Well, seeing as I have a lot of grovelling to do, how's about we head down the shops to buy Cloud and Leon a peace offering? I seem to remember there being a veritable plethora of restaurants surrounding the centre, so if you're lucky I just might feed you." I drawled, although there was little ambiguity in my true meaning. Sora's meal ticket was going to burn a bigger hole in my pocket than the: 'forgive me, pleeeaaaase', gifts were.

"Will you buy me dessert?" He demanded dubiously, as if he were actually having second thoughts.

-_I would not cave to the puppy face; I was a strong individual who had enough self control to resist…_-

"I'll buy you an ice cream on the way." I sighed, wondering just what the hell was wrong with me. Sora just squealed delightedly, seemingly oblivious to my inner workings and machinations, before flinging his arms about my neck and bouncing.

* * *

Good sweet zombie Jesus he needed to stop touching me…

* * *

I recoiled as if I had been burned, dousing the lecherous thoughts that had seemingly come out of absolutely nowhere… maybe even the timeless void, if we were actually going to be thorough in our search for where on earth an attraction for SORA had developed. 

When he released me, just as spontaneously, my priorities shifted to: must not hyperventilate like nut-job. What in god's name was wrong with me? People didn't suddenly decide to gape at the backsides of childhood friends, did they? I bloody well hoped not, cos when Selphie ogled me I just felt oddly discomfited, and I would rather shove my beautiful face into a deep fat fryer than become Selphie.

Dramatic epiphanies aside, I'm not being unnecessarily egotistical here; I speak the bare, honest truth when I proudly declare that I am sexy as hell. The people of Destiny Islands would spend many a decade mourning my unfortunate disfigurement, and would go on to dreamily tell their grandchildren tales of my ethereal beauty and eldritch eyes.

And I'm not just a pretty face, seeing as at this precise moment in time I'm juggling a clingy Sora AND an interesting revelation, all whilst spinning a tangled web of illusion and intrigue. My ability to multitask is what makes me truly great… as opposed to just plain awesome… did I mention devilishly attractive yet?

Then again, Sora knew me far too well to easily put up with only a divided fragment of my attention, so decided to make himself my focal point by wrapping himself about one of my arms like a limpet.

Now that I actually thought about it, the whole 'gay' thing seemed to be frightening me considerably less than the unexpected impulse to do immoral, decidedly kinky things to the most innocent little lamb I had ever laid eyes upon.

The truly harrowing thing was another foreign emotion warring with the overwhelming lust, an evocative sense of warmth and affection that made gleeful suggestions of feeding him chocolates, lying together, watching the sunset in comfortable, fulfilled silence, maybe even sharing the legendary…

Oh, Christ on a pogo-stick; what had he DONE to me?

Irony was a bitch, I finally decided, still slightly dumbstruck as to how one single moment of delicious, platonic friction had emitted a spark fierce enough to burn away every last cloying remnant of my own denial.

The shock was palpable; my heart was beating hard enough to burst out through the protective shelter of my ribcage and my lungs felt punctured, every breath I took seemed to be far too shallow.

Just how did one go about coming to terms with the fact that they'd been in love with their best friend since... forever? Oh god… how was I blinkered enough to ignore this?

I'd been totally devoted to the little brunette since I was all of four years old, and while back then I was fortunately ignorant of all the implications of a romantic love, I had never really seen him as a brother or a companion… He was family, but he was more than that… He was everything…

I pinched myself, hard.

Hissing slightly at the sharp, brief stab of pain, I moaned low in my throat, inundated with despair and bewilderment. Why had that emotion-repressing off switch broken NOW? It'd been working fine for over a decade!

_-Stupid faulty internal wiring_…-

"Er… Riku, you okay? You've kind of… been… staring at me for quite a few minutes now… and you haven't blinked once…" Sora stuttered embarrassedly, waving a clumsily proportioned hand in front of my face.

I simply gawked like someone with all the mental activity of a turnip. I guessed that the information overload had been such a proverbial slap upside the head that all my brain cells had snuffed it on contact.

Hands were not supposed to be so sodding erogenous, especially not Sora's. He had long, tapering fingers attached to palms that were so freakishly oversized that it looked like he'd strapped garden trowels to his wrists with masking tape. They were callused, clumsy and monstrous, and I really had no practicable reason for why I was mentally picturing them toying with the flimsy material at the base of my t-shirt, roughened pads of ghosting, teasing digits brushing over the skin of my lower back.

I briefly entertained the prospect of physically forcing that fantasy from my roiling brain by smashing my head against one of the corroding lockers that lined the now deserted hallway.

I was hopelessly out of my depth, and I came to the conclusion that I hated this particular novel experience. I lacked the control to direct the conversation, my bloody rebelling hormones, and seemingly even to regulate my own damned oxygen intake! I was effectively both paralysed and speechless, which wasn't doing much to quell Sora's rising levels of mindless panic.

He fussed over me ineffectually, smoothing back the hair from where it was obscuring my already hazy vision. My breathing hitched at the contact, each ticklish touch of skin on skin searing like molten seduction, sending small tendrils of glorious sensation to connect with the growing spirals of desire pooling in my abdomen.

"You're up next, Riku; Cid's decided to hear your side of the story." An alien voice interrupted with a poorly suppressed shudder. I pivoted violently to face both Cloud and Leon, who seemed taken aback at how jittery I was acting.

Ignoring their inquisitive eyes for the time being, I dashed behind the blonde, just to put some distance, and a barricade, between myself and Sora. My dilemma was temporarily sealed away for safe keeping, and I found that it was easier to refute my earlier sentiments and dampen the raging lust roaring through my veins under supervision.

"Is he alright?" Cloud asked concernedly, to which Sora could only reply with a baffled shrug.

"I'm fine… just a bit… light headed…" I murmured feebly, wondering why my emotions had suddenly gone haywire for no valid reason.

I could accept that on some deeper, subconscious level I had always been aware that I had possessed ulterior motives for instigating a friendship with Sora, but the incomparable invocations of love and lust and everything in between had been consuming, and not a little terrifying. I had felt like a stranger in my own skin, and it was disconcerting.

However, mostly, I was just wary of the undertone of a dark possessiveness that lurked beneath the more virtuous of the feelings evoked in me for the ditzy, waiflike boy.

Did any of this have anything to do with that moronic delusion? My memories of the dream seemed to confirm that it had indeed revolved around light and darkness, to which I had apparently been possessed by the latter of which.

What was sealed in the depths of my heart? And how could I keep it in?

"You really don't look so hot…" The blonde continued, expressing his concern when I made no effort to cease my blank, aimless staring.

"Just go home and get yourself patched up. I'll clear things with Cid." Leon made the decision for all of us, although the command alluded to feigned pretences of indifferent apathy. "Sora, go with him, he looks about ready to wander into traffic just to spite me." He concluded authoritatively, sighing deeply when I made no move to contest his intentional provocation.

The younger brunette nodded vigorously, wrapping those burning hands about my forearms, hot enough to brand their imprints into my sensitised flesh as he steered me towards the exit.

While the attraction was still present, almost ubiquitously so, it was now diminished and manageable, a fact of which I had neither the energy nor the desire to analyse. I leaned into the soft, guiding touch, mewling out my gratification as I felt far too disoriented to do anything but passively follow.

* * *

I had concentrated on my feet throughout the course of the journey, focussing on putting one foot in front of the other while praying that I wouldn't trip over something as innocuous as a shard of gravel. 

Sora proceeded to push me through an open door, its merrily jingling bell alerting the store owners to the presence of potential customers. Trust Sora to take me up on my generous offer when all I wanted to do was lie down in a darkened room with an icepack plastered across my forehead.

"You looked like you could do with a sugar-fix." He grinned sheepishly, before bounding up to the counter to paw at the sneeze-guard like some pre-pubescent, snot-nosed brat.

I found his antics positively adorable.

"What do you fancy?" I asked, forcing some semblance of cheer and good will into my tone. I was not in the mood for ice cream; it would only serve to aggravate the splitting headache that had lodged itself above my right eyebrow a little over ten minutes ago.

"Chocolate!" He sang out, bouncing back and forth on his heels. He really was just a kid on steroids; someone must have fiddled with his birth records…

"Can we be more specific, or am I supposed to try my hand at mind-reading?" I asked tiredly, although I was already hazarding an informed guess in the direction of the aptly named: Death by Chocolate. It certainly did resemble a heart attack in a tub, and that was all I was going to mention on the matter.

"That one!" Sora pointed, beaming to the other patrons, as if trying to rub my generosity in their faces… odd child…

Unsurprisingly, the brunette had indeed selected the substance that made me feel like my arteries were cowering in fear of the vast amount of saturated fat and cholesterol enough to kill a man much healthier than I.

After reading the brief description, my prognosis had hardly been disproved. The mixture formed a culmination of milk and white chocolates, shot through with a dark chocolate ripple, all of which being stuffed full with clotted cream and further chocolate chips set in mounds of cookie dough.

The small print helpfully informed me that such a concoction was not to be consumed by pregnant women, those with high blood pressure, high blood sugar levels, and the last was being concealed by Sora's excitedly jabbing index finger, but from what I could see, it seemed like it was also discouraging those with back trouble from consumption of such a fearful confection.

Just don't ask me why…

"If you go into a diabetic coma I'm leaving you here to die…" I huffed; pleased I'd at least regained some of my sense of humour. Reading all those tiny warnings had exacerbated my migraine though, so I was sort of half-amused, half-grumpy bordering on homicidal.

"What are you having, Riku? And you can't say vanilla… cos you ALWAYS have vanilla, and vanilla's BOOOORING." He moaned, attracting many a disapproving stare from the other customers with his whining.

I was slightly offended, seeing as there was nothing wrong with vanilla… It was sweet, but not sickeningly so, it was simple, solid and unchanging; essentially the perfect flavour for someone who wasn't actually all that fond of ice cream.

"How about-" I wasn't even given the time to make another choice, as Sora rolled his eyes like 'I' was the one making a big fuss about something as trivial as ice cream.

"No! You can't have coconut either!" He interrupted smoothly, which was slightly disconcerting, as coconut had been my second choice.

"And why not?" I queried; quirking a sardonic eyebrow at the mini-dictator.

"Cos it's white… and you ALWAYS eat white ice cream… and where's the fun in that? I mean, it's like you go out of your way to pick the bland ones! So, today, you're not allowed any white ice cream… or sorbets, cos those are sour, and that just defeats the purpose of this whole outing." He concluded his lecture with a snort, leaving me to slowly absorb all that information. Ah, in essence, I'd been banned from every single flavour I would willingly devour.

Joy of joys…

I needed to find a loophole, and quick… If I didn't I'd end up with something dripping chocolate and calories and premature death.

"Iced coffee?" I fairly pleaded, but the skinny wench shot me down with a petulant frown.

"No coffee either!" He bellowed, which again drew disgruntled stares. I just wanted to hide beneath one of the tables at this point, possibly until closing time.

"Well, what do YOU think I should get then?" I finally caved in, scowling as Sora grinned in triumph.

"That one!" He declared, pointing at what appeared to be a young woman in an apron.

"I don't think she's edible, Sora… or for sale…" I muttered, now completely humiliated and wishing I could just curl up into a little ball and die.

The sales girl giggled slightly and offered us a shy greeting, which Sora returned cheerfully, as always.

"How'd you two get out of school so early?" She asked, smiling as she prepared to break out her chastising wagging finger.

"Riku went all zombie-like on us and got sent home, so I decided some ice cream would cheer him up!" The brunette cheered, and I rolled my eyes at his 'selflessness'.

"I'm going to be talking to Cloud to see whether your story checks out, Sora… last time you snuck out to get sugar I almost lost my job." She giggled, and I belatedly realised it was Aeris behind the counter.

Today must have been one of her afternoons free from academic pursuits, and she had decided to spend them making some quick cash at the ice cream parlour.

She was good at her job; attentive, friendly and well-mannered, but I had never cared much for her. Leon shared my sentiments, but I think that was more due to the fact that she and Cloud had used to be nigh inseparable than any particular misgivings with her personality.

She was more than tolerable, in small doses, in much the same respect that Kairi was. They were both giggling goodie-goodies, with more than a passing tendency to become vapid and conspiring when the mood struck them. They were pretty pink princesses, and the whole class' sweetheart mentality that surrounded the pair irritated the hell out of me.

The pink also pissed me off, but that just sounds petty…

"It was all just a big misunderstanding! Who could have foreseen that Professor Cid would have chased me all the way here?" Sora cried melodramatically, before pouting when I raised my hand with a snort.

So much for solidarity… oh well…

"Well, history had better not be repeating itself." She scolded gently, before giggling again in that infuriatingly feminine way. "So, what can I get you?" She asked, business face firmly sliding over her features. I briefly wondered whether my assaulted nose was less swollen than I had imagined or if Aeris simply didn't care.

"I'll have a triple scoop of the Death by Chocolate, and Riku'll have a do-"

"SINGLE." I barged into the order, making sure that my choice was incontestable.

"Alright… fine, be like that… and a SINGLE scoop of the Toffee, please." Sora completed his little list, smiling contently as Aeris compliantly began to pile his bowl high with refined sugar.

* * *

As usual, I was the one who had to fork out for both treats, and I muttered bitterly that if Sora had wanted Death so bad I would have given it to him, minus the extortion. 

"Soooooo…?" He asked, hovering over me as I brought the spoon to my lips. My ice cream looked rather pathetic and small, remaining completely unadorned while Sora's was a towering Leviathan inundated with syrup and sprinkles, but I liked to keep confectionary simple, if not totally excluded from my diet.

The toffee was surprisingly good; positively delectable, for an ice cream. My eyes rolled back slightly as I failed to stifle a pleasured moan, licking about the contours of the plastic spoon to erase all traces of the delicious, wonderful substance.

"Really, really good…" I garbled, already thrusting another spoonful into my eagerly awaiting mouth.

"You've led a rather deprived life, haven't you?" The brunette chuckled as I attacked the ice cream like a man half insane from starvation.

"Can't talk… eating…" I muttered, resulting in Sora bursting into peals of laughter.

"Is it really that good?" He asked curiously, once he had recovered from his bout of laughing at me, which I just couldn't bring myself to care about at this particular moment.

"Here…" I grumbled, ramming the spoon into Sora's mouth before he could protest at being fed, by another man, with the same germ-contaminated spoon. His eyes lit up and he made a satisfied little squeak.

"Mmmm… I wonder if they've refined the recipe? It never usually tastes THIS good…" He purred contentedly, manhandling me so he could steal another taste.

"Nope, it's the same as always!" Aeris called from behind the counter, laughing at our antics as Sora adopted his most baffled, confounded expression.

"Maybe it's ice cream envy?" I suggested blithely, giving into temptation and nicking a spoonful of frozen heart failure, which Sora had already half-decimated in little under thirty seconds, and popping it into my mouth. "Ooh, this is sinfully good… maybe I should rethink my stance on the whole chocolate deal?" I pondered aloud, cackling when the brunette morphed into mother hen mode and retrieved his precious ice cream.

"I think you're right… everything seems to taste better today, which is pretty weird, huh?" He beamed, polishing off the remainder of his snack, as well as mine, although I managed to wrestle another couple of mouthfuls from him before relinquishing the toffee.

It struck me as odd that this was the first time we'd shared ice creams before. Usually, Sora only made me buy the damned stuff so he could steal it when I left the melting puddle of gloop virtually untouched.

Why was today so different?

The brunette never usually went for anything less than a total sugar overload, and the toffee ordinarily would have bored his desensitised palate.

The only thing that had changed about the entire situation was that I'd licked the spoon…

Oh…

* * *

**A/N:I like reviews? -hopeful smile-**

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	3. Chapter Two

**A/N:** Ok, I'm really, really rushed here, so I'll make it quick. THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone who reviewed or faved or even just read the story, it means a lot, really! Woo! Anyways, under normal circumstances I'd babble at each individual reviewer until they begged me to stop, but it's almost midnight and already running on borrowed time and patience. So, sorry, I swear I'll make up for it next chapter! Ooh! And isn't this nifty, I broke the 10,000 word mark! Go me!

And read **Mikenno's: The Will of Kingdom Hearts**! I command you! Cos it's really, really super-good... In fact, probably better than this is! Doesn't mean you get to not read Sideways, but... y'know, when you're done, and if you feel like reading something else... Yes... that'll work...

**Warnings:** Slight Sora molestation, (I swear he likes it!) cameos from Rikku and Gippal (FFX-2) and Professor Cid with a harpoon. Hopefully he doesn't use it on anyone... Very little by way of plot development, but there's some relationship progress and some daft (not filler) humour. Also, there is some slight Riku-bashing (physical bashing, Riku's too cool to be heartlessly mocked). If I've forgotten anything, meh, I hope you'll get over it, lol.

**DISCLAIMER:** I don't own anything by Disney or Squenix, or Cabbage Patch Kids, or stingrays, or Hell's Grannies, or Battenberg... Dear Lord that sounds random... Oh well!

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**Chapter Two: It came from the Cabbage Patch**

Somehow, although the methods as to how and my eventual success are lost to the vast archives of time immemorial, I managed to flee from the unexpectedly oppressive, cloying pocket of stagnating space that seemed to be slowly questing out from the centre of the ice cream parlour.

If we're venturing into the world of the term of the layman, then it'd probably be clearer to merely state that I legged it, away from Sora and his unforeseen proclivity for a heady combination of sugar and saliva. The latter of which being exclusively mine… leading to the unneeded loquaciousness, convoluted sentence structure and higgledy-piggledy syntax, seeing as I'm prone to babbling when the only alternative is to actually address profound issues of scariness and mind-numbing terror.

So, presently I was cowering on some indiscriminate street corner, blushing harder than I had assumed was actually possible. Closely following the potentially overused defence that I was Riku, possessed of an unflappable demeanour and a smirk for every undesirable situational development, I attempted to poignantly ignore such a development.

However, as usually proved to be the case, an altogether damnably conditioned response in my humble opinion, I was forced to reiterate a plethora of curses in various languages and dialects, directly aimed at my regrettably alabaster skin.

Sometimes, it was difficult being the only creature on some sort of paradisiacal desert oasis seemingly lacking in melanin, especially when standing next to someone as bronzed and sun-kissed as Tidus, although the ridicule and enforced segregation tactics had died down some in recent years.

Conversely, now that I think about it, even in the present day, I would be left with the lingering impression that the majority of my rigorously controlled circle of friends were still wary of my ivory skin and the argent strands of my hair.

As children, they had thought me a sort of ethereal changeling child; novel and undeniably fascinating, but threatening nonetheless, despite the fascination it evoked with its curious, preternatural appearance. The barren islet I resided upon had therefore suited all involved, as it served as both a haven and a cage.

I guess my faithfulness stems from further insecurities at being accepted… Comprehension never seemed to have fully dawned on Sora, as he eagerly embraced me as an idol, sibling and rival, blissfully unaware of my apparent stigma, blithely overlooking that I did not share the golden glow emitted by his skin.

I wasn't quite sure if I felt more amused or saddened by the fact that the dippy brunette, oblivious as always, seemed to have tripped over his colossal feet, tumbling sideways into the barricades I had so diligently constructed about my fragile heart, shattering the fortification that sealed my every dark and desperate yearning, locking out human kindness all the while. Subconsciously he had set up shop in the recesses of such a dim and barren place, as if he owned it, which was typical of the boy's never-ending audacity, and had never returned the conjectural deed that he had so unwittingly stolen.

"Geez Riku, you're thinking so hard I'M the one getting the headache…" A bubbly voice cheerfully interrupted my soul-searching, and had I not been so desperately attempting to hide my blushing countenance, I would have given the little brunette an almighty scowl for distracting me from my interior monologue.

"And how does that work?" I drawled snidely, seeing no reason to act charitably, seeing as benevolence on my part usually led to gratification of the touchy-feely kind, which was bad on so many levels right now.

"I dunno… Via osmosis or something…" He shrugged carelessly, earning a tortured groan in response.

"How are you passing biology again?" I asked dryly, rolling my eyes heavenwards as if some higher power was at liberty to disclose such sensitive information.

"My super-smart tutor volunteered to lend me his aid. Apparently he was noble enough to deign me a worthy cause." He replied cheekily, deft, pink tongue poking out from between plush lips as he pulled down one of his eyelids.

The blush came back with a vengeance.

I was able to see splotches of vermillion dancing across my collar bones from the corner of my eyes, as at present I was suddenly oh-so-preoccupied with staring at my shoes.

Shoes were safe, unassuming, and decidedly un-sexy.

Sure, they had tongues as well, but they were not employed in acts of wanton seduction, seeing as they were made out of… oh, I don't know, nylon maybe… something inorganic and about as arousing as a cat-tent at any rate.

"After a healthy amount of blackmail and untoward threats to my person." I finally managed to reply, wincing at the memory of Sora mischievously brandishing a box of enough photographic evidence to kill my social life stone dead. Probably enough to just plain kill me stone dead, judging by the sheer volume of the box and the sheer volume of pain it invoked when the klutz dropped the damned thing on my poor, battered toes.

"Ah, it must have been chemistry where you agreed to assist me of your own free will." He concluded smugly, completely unrepentant that in order to enlist me in order to champion yet another of his academic causes, the previous incident had involved causing a scene in an entirely too public place.

"Nope, that time you accused me of statutory rape, whilst mournfully squawking like some featherbrained harpy: 'Don't you love me anymore?' An old lady proceeded to bludgeon me half to death with her handbag, which I still insist was stuffed chock full of bricks, outside of a 'Help the Aged' storefront." I grumbled, much to Sora's amusement, if his giggles at my expense were to serve as any sort of indication.

"Physics?" He questioned innocently, before turning that wicked, knee-liquefying grin on me again.

"You threatened to tell Selphie that I'd lost my mind and had just up and decided to share a paopu fruit with her." I shuddered, not wanting to ever have to entertain the notion of being romantically linked with the female equivalent of the Energizer Bunny for the rest of eternity.

"English then…" He stated; although the comment sounded oddly hopeful, which signified that the manipulative little wench obviously thought I was masochistic enough to peruse the battlefields that were substituted in lieu of recognised prose, or the massacres that contained his inimitable style of grammar bloodbaths.

"Not even for the sun, moon and stars, could you bribe me to titivate your forays into desecrating language." I snarled, subtly restraining my internal Grammar Nazi, who at this point was issuing a call to arms.

Sora merely pouted morosely, before seizing my slender wrist in the grip of one mutant hand. I really hoped he hadn't decided that we were going to go play in traffic 'til I submitted. I was promptly dragged along the street, despite how hard I was digging my heels into the cracks of the pavement.

Since when had Sora deposited some muscle onto those stick thin girl-arms of his anyway?

"Around the same time that you started experimenting with growth hormones and steroids." He replied snippily, releasing my sore wrist as I was left, gaping stupidly in shock and indignation. Upon regaining my sensibilities, although the observation, though completely untrue, was still smarting, I sprinted to catch up with his retreating form, hooking an arm about his chest and tugging as hard as I could to bring the boy to a grinding halt.

"Problems with using my 'inside voice' aside, if you're insecure about being a runty little midget with all the upper body strength of a pre-pubescent girl, don't take it out on me." I growled into his hair, curling the hand clutching at the brunette's shoulder into a claw. "Especially not when I'm offering you a compliment." I concluded sulkily, scooping the fuming boy up, rotating my burden one hundred and eighty degrees in my arms before placing him back on his feet to gaze into his narrowed eyes, blazing with an icy blue fire.

"You think I'd be grateful to be informed that I have bony girl-arms?" He demanded petulantly, apparently more than slightly dubious.

"I never said that the compliment was an obvious one. You've got to search for it, like finding a diamond in a lump of coal. D'uh…" I declared haughtily, hoping the pouting brunette would buy the impromptu lie.

"You really think I'm strong?" He asked in a small, whiny voice, as if practically begging me to agree with his assumption.

"But of course, albeit deceptively so… You're still nowhere near a match for me though, so don't get cocky." I grinned in a manner I hoped was roguish and debonair, before ruffling Sora's cinnamon-tinged spikes affectionately as he scoffed arrogantly.

"I guess that means that I should stop going easy on you." He teased, pulling a face that could only be described as comical, as opposed to the desired label of pant-wettingly scary.

"So, that means I'm forgiven, right?" I grinned pleadingly, deliberately ignoring the little obnoxious voice inside my head that tacked an: Again… onto the end of the question.

"Only if you improve my coursework to such an extent that the sheer badness of it all doesn't cause ocular bleeding to all those who attempt to read it." He decided, after a short period of deliberation as to how he was going to blackmail me to win back his fickle affections.

"Sora, it's a critical essay with a pathetically low word count, not the Necromonicon." I scolded gently, before bursting into giggles at the unintended pun. An indeterminate amount of seconds later, I realised that Sora didn't seem to be jointly participating in my brief moment of levity. The laughter was consequently replaced by a churlish atmosphere of sullen silence.

I wrenched the pen out from where it had been residing in one of the shallow pockets of my jeans and began to furiously scrawl the key words from my inspired display of wit across the back of my left hand. Hopefully they'd serve to act as a trigger and I'd be able to recount my inadvertent act of comedic genius to Leon, who would no doubt appreciate the humorous retelling far more than Sora, most likely because he would actually understand the reference.

"I don't think I get it…" The brunette mumbled sheepishly, hiding his face in his hands when I patronisingly ruffled his uncontrollable spikes after depositing the trusty biro back from whence it came. Happy that my hypothesis had indeed been accepted as unquestionable verity, I decided to enlighten the perplexed brunette, seeing as if I didn't, the tenacious cherub would single-mindedly attempt to wheedle the information out of me, and the boy became truly demonic when someone obstructed him on the path towards any particular goal.

Honestly, if I just clarified the whole situation, our time expenditure would be nicely economised, and I probably wouldn't end up being savaged or force fed by an old person. That really ranked pretty high on the list of all time harrowing as hell moments.

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It hadn't helped that Sora had barely reached my shoulders at the time, even including his hair to add to his overall height, which formulated one rather twisted equation… well, that and the fact that even to this day he could easily pass for a seven year-old. 

I must have come across as a very, very bad man in that mall… Having the little kid brother stereotype suddenly glomp me, crystal tears in his impossibly large eyes, wailing that he: 'did so have stamina like the big people…'

The disapproving, judgementally horrified glares that had come my way after that little stunt had only intensified when he started to clamber up my body like I was made from climbing ivy, shrugging carelessly and explaining that his legs weren't long enough to make me: 'feel yummy' when I squawked indignantly at being used as mountaineering practice terrain.

After shooting him an initial perturbed, confounded glance, I began to stutter, in a strained, desperate whisper that his legs were: 'very… er… shapely', before pleading with him to get the hell off.

His response had been to lock his slim, delicate ankles –with no little difficulty, because he was wearing those gargantuan bubble shoes which were acting as a lot more of a hindrance than a help- over my hips, pulling his body flush against mine with a brutal crushing force.

He'd bolted like a traitorous, startled rabbit when that old lady came down on me like a ton of righteous bricks, half of which I'm SURE were in her damned handbag, screeching of public displays of affection and abusing the super-powers bestowed upon me by the wisdom of age and the prowess of hypothalamus-secreted growth hormone.

Sora was offered a slab of Battenberg by the suddenly bipolar old biddy, who eagerly accepted her condolences as I was left to bleed to near-death on the tiles. Petty revenge was served when she zoned in for a toothless, sloppy kiss followed up by a claw-like pinch-fest levelled upon Sora's chubby cheeks.

Then, she flew off into the night, crocheted biker shawl wrapped around her birdlike shoulders, flapping in the breeze as she gunned the powerful engine of the motorcycle she'd just hotwired.

Ok, fine, fine, that didn't actually… happen, per se, but the bit with the chequered cake, which looked like the Easter bunny had exploded all over it and the office executives proceeded to market the misfortune as icing, is actually true, disturbingly enough. Not the Easter bunny bit though, cos that would be, as Cloud so elegantly puts it: ew…

Back-pedalling and babbling aside, the majority of that particular tangential aside was entirely factual, just don't ask me why the crazy old lady was ferrying slices of cake about with her in portable Tupperware containers.

I suppose the physical violence had been for the best though, in hindsight, seeing as there was really nothing like implementing the righteous fury of the elderly to curb physical 'enthusiasm'. I doubted I would have felt all that comfortable explaining to the clueless boy just what was pressing into his thigh…

In my defence, being just shy of fifteen means you're just entering the phase when your hormones have gone so haywire that even a lamp-post seems able to inflame sexual ardour… god, maybe even table-legs when wildly erotic fantasies have been staved off for longer than five minutes.

If we're being brutally honest, things haven't really changed all that much when it comes to prolonged Sora touchy-feely-ness. My reactions certainly haven't, that's for damned sure… The only difference I can immediately think of is that my voice has actually decided to pick one octave and stick to it when I squeak girlishly in fright, shock and desire.

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It was unsurprising that the little brunette had picked up on my sudden reticence, resultant from spacing out again, despite the fact that he took pride in driving others to distraction, far away from the deep thought processes of even the most strong-willed individual. 

His counterattack was swift and merciless.

Clamping his gloved hands either side of my vacant visage, he manhandled me like some sort of meat-puppet mannequin, only ceasing his manoeuvres when my head seemed to be tilted at enough of an angle to adhere to his suddenly perfectionist demands.

Paired orbs of inquisitively amused lapis lazuli clashed with my own muted jade gaze. Sora smiled his most accommodating smile of all the cheesy grins in his extensive arsenal, before hooking his sticky fingers through my lips and pulling hard.

Yelping, not in the most dignified of manners, I staggered back, hopefully away from the wrenching, chocolate coated fingers of doom.

My lips creaked painfully, seeing as with the exception of Selphie, not many people were used to using that many facial muscles to pursue the magical art of coerced beaming, although I severely doubted anyone would ever need to remind Selphie to keep her chin up.

Unfortunately, Sora was loath to release me, and so we remained in our stalemate, Sora snickering like an easily amused child whose attention span derailed at the sight of shiny objects while I simply stood, paralysed like an asphyxiating fish out of water, caught hook, line and sinker.

When the proverbial light bulb sprang into illumination above my pinned head, I attempted to mask the predatory look of triumph that had no doubt sparked in my eyes.

If Sora wanted to act like a child, -and he really, really was, the puerility on display was so much so that I half expected him to persuade me into attempting to pronounce the word 'bucket' just so he could run about, informing random strangers that I'd said a 'sweeeeaaaar'- then I'd beat him at his own game, returning the favour in kind.

"…nnhhh…aaah!" I forced the pleading, agonised whine from my obstructed throat, expelling gasping pants of scalding air that condensed upon the awkwardly tightening hands, the pads of the brunette's fingertips clawing for stronger purchase against my shuddering mouth.

My tongue snaked out to wet my lips, retreating back into my mouth to curl about one trespassing index finger.

Smirking wickedly, I proceeded to apply a heady amount of suction, emitting a satisfied purr when my diligence paid off and the intruding digit became helplessly intertwined with the probing, molten and satiny flesh.

The brunette jerked his presently unfettered hand back so violently I was surprised his shoulder hadn't been wrenched clear of its socket.

One gloved palm was released from my lips with an audibly moist, slurping pop, trailing an insubstantial, iridescent bridge of spun sugar and saliva that led back into the gaping maw of the 'cavern of no return'.

I twisted my head, contorting to invade personal space, cocking a hip to diminish my height, turning a hungry, heated gaze towards the stunned boy, locking our emotionally charged, contrasting stares, barely concealed beneath the thin veil of my eyelashes.

Half-lidded eyes blazing with unrestrained mirth and mischief, cheeks sallow and concave from the force of the enthusiastic devouring of the brunette's saccharine-coated sweetness, the harshness of the planes of my face were painted in stark relief against my fuller, sensuously parted lips, which were presently engulfing more of the remaining digit until movement was totally restricted by the base of the brunette's knuckles.

Sora was rewarded with a prolonged, scraping nip of enamel traversing back along a thin layer of silken skin when he allowed that patented, seductively guileless breathy whimper of his to escape his constricted throat. Fathomless cerulean eyes were now clouded and lust-darkened; flickering at the alien sensations evoked by playfully grazing teeth and stabbing, pointed swipes of a calculated tongue.

"And thus concludes the lesson for today…" I drawled haughtily, after delicately clasping Sora's hand in my own and gently freeing his finger from my mouth. The brunette responded with an uncomprehending, fuzzy stare. "Let's recap then, shall we?" I chuckled, thoroughly enjoying the fact that I'd pushed him even farther than the realms of monosyllabic grunting. "We have learnt that it's not wise to interrupt or prank teacher when he's talking." I dictated pointedly, ticking the statement off on one finger.

"…" The brunette opened his mouth, no doubt to protest or shout at me, before quickly coming to the conclusion that this was probably not the best of ideas. His lips sealed shut, the wall of skin barely able to muffle the jarring sound of his teeth clacking together.

"We have learnt that teacher is extremely witty and intelligent, as he made a delightful pun off of a reference to ocular bleeding, to Grimoires, leading to grammar, the literal translation of the French, leading to the way you leave destitution in your destructive wake in pursuit of the divine understanding of a semi-colon." I chirped; relieved to have finally closed a topic that had been long since abandoned.

"Uh…" Sora, earning himself an eye-roll for already breaking the first rule, remained clueless and disconcertedly aroused, but I was in no mood to break out the hand puppets, so moved the subject matter briskly along.

"Actually relating to your education in English, you have been informed of the dangers of powerful rhetorical devices. The imagery exposed to you today is known as phallic symbolism. Get used to it, for you'll be seeing a lot of each other over the course of your 'education'." I grinned fiendishly, internally deciding to broach ambiguity next lesson, because the metaphysical poets made it oh-so-easy to abuse such literary techniques. "And last but not least: shove something in my mouth again without my express permission and I'll bite it off." I snarled; dissolving into a fit of sadistic giggles as the boy went briefly cross-eyed.

Then again… if he DID ask permission…

I almost choked at the anything but child-friendly image that sailed into my head. Now was definitely not the time for ulterior motives to be surfacing, seeing as the poor, hapless creature was shell-shocked enough as it was without adding to the list of charges and offences.

Sora, on the whole, was about as sexually aware as a plank of driftwood, and that's putting it kindly. I would have no difficulty in accepting the suggestion that the brunette still believed that contented, celibate parents had cheerful bundles of gurgling joy bestowed upon their persons by a freaking stork dropping the bloody things down the chimney flue.

Then again, I doubted most families participating in island life really needed, or indeed possessed, a fireplace, cos it was still a fair sixty degrees on a cold day in winter. Guess the stork had to follow a detour to a nearby vegetable patch in lieu of a more traditional drop-off point.

"That was… enlightening…" Sora, once again able to form coherent words, announced, if only to break the awkward, uncomfortable silence… I responded with a quirk of an eyebrow, as the brunette suddenly became preoccupied with rearranging the baggy material of his daft parachute-pants. Whether he had suddenly become fashion conscious or was just being decidedly… odd… I had no choice but to feel a fearful sort of concern for Sora when he started to vocally praise the lord for the formlessness of it all.

His brief foray into the arts of sartorial feng shui was regrettably unsuccessful, as he finally resorted to jamming his slick, gloved and gleaming hands into the pockets of his traditional vermillion jumpsuit.

Tugging slightly against the fabric, he created three triangular protrusions, as if mimicking the contours of the crown pendant habitually about his slender throat.

Wait a second… three? I know I'm sometimes slightly self-absorbed, but it's far above and beyond the call of the ridiculous to not notice supernumerary limbs… Maybe the space aliens grafted another one on while my back was turned? Or maybe he crazy-glued a prosthetic limb to his stomach by accident… I wouldn't put it past him.

Then again, whatever the hell it is, it's probably too small to be an arm… Maybe a slender hand… Ooh! It could be a lucky monkey's paw! Oh… wait… that's a lucky rabbit's foot… wrong analogy… Aren't monkey paws meant to do acts of unspeakable evil?

Judging by all of the air-headed twists and turns my thoughts are taking, the aliens must have been awful busy to take my brain and reimburse Sora with an extra limb as compensation in such a short period of time.

Hold on there… did it MOVE?

I warily fixed my stare on the questionable object hiding in Sora's parachute pants; skittishly bouncing on the balls of my feet in case it decided to burst through the brunette's stomach and eat and/or tentacle rape me.

I proceeded to curse the day I allowed Selphie and Tidus to coerce me into a sci-fi anime marathon. You just can't sit through one of those movies and leave the room wholesome, unsullied and emotionally unscarred.

This led to the prognosis that I was surrounded by fools, fetishists and mental patients, which in turn said little of a positive nature in regards to my choices when selecting a companion or life partner.

"Riku… could you please stop… staring? It's really not helping." Sora suddenly squeaked, reminding me that I was indeed in the midst of a staring contest with the sticky-outty thing of my potential demise.

"Helping? Helping what?" I queried distantly, still fascinated and determined to diagnose the thingamajigger. Would it be considered rude and politically incorrect if I poked it?

"Oh, come ON, cutie! Just kiss her already!" An unknown, overly girlish voice called out, shattering the tense moment as my gaze snapped up and away from Sora's crotch.

Scanning the immediate area, I identified the interloper as a bubbly blonde, who was practically hanging from a second-storey window by sheer force of will. She seemed to be hooked to the sill by her folded body, the partition bending her into a right angle, the divider between legs and near-bare torso taking the form of an olive green mini-skirt.

Casting my eyes up and down an ominously empty street, I gulped nervously. She hadn't witnessed the sucking and literal navel gazing, had she?

Sora seemed to take the hint, as he pointed stupidly to himself. The random blonde giggled noisily whilst nodding emphatically, wobbling slightly as she loosened her grip on the glass pane to push her blue bandanna back up out of her eyes and into her intricately braided hair.

Huh… at least someone's rooting for me and the silly twit. It's just a pity that we've only earned her support because she thinks I'm a woman…

If Sora tells people about this, the police will never find his body.

"You think I should kiss… Riku?" The brunette asked slowly, mulling the prospect over in his vapid little head as he came to terms with the suggestion.

"No, I think you should kiss HER!" The blonde exclaimed, nearing some sort of hyperactive state of exasperation. "Not to mention the fact that Gippykins'd probably tear you a new one if you tried anything…" She muttered to herself, although the comment was still perfectly audible. I guessed she had the same problems Tidus did with volume control. Standing too close to the boy for extended periods of time often resulted in permanent damage to a person's hearing.

"While we may share a name, I'm fairly sure we don't share a gender…" I stated nonchalantly, feigning ennui as I stole another quick glance at the unidentified trouser-inhabiting object.

It was rapidly diminishing… the blonde girl must have frightened it off…

My female counterpart's golden brows furrowed in consternation for a short, agonising moment before her mouth contorted into a perfect circle of daunted comprehension.

Seconds later she was grinning, wearing the mega-watt smile I had already come to associate her with. Her large, emerald eyes were alive with good humour and a fairly rabid amount of interest.

"I'm so sorry!" She cried, looking utterly unrepentant as she giggled at her slight miscalculation. "It's just, you're so pretty and delicate looking and you have nice, soft, sparkly hair…" She trailed off, entering some mental happy-shiny land populated by glittering objects to amuse the terminally capricious.

"Delicate looking?" I mouthed sulkily, feeling put out enough to pout as Sora hid an evil cackle behind his hands.

"Anyways, apart from having to retract my statement in order to amend my pronoun usage, I think you two should go for it! It'd be pretty hot to watch at any rate!" She giggled again, which was beginning to grate slightly on my nerves. Then again, she knew what a pronoun was, so she couldn't be all bad…

"Um… Er… We really are just… uh… friends… I think if I… kissed him he'd… hit me…" Sora stammered bashfully, an action that I couldn't help but smile affectionately at.

"You're not fooling me for a second, sunshine! I think hitting you would be the last thing on his mind judging by that little display from earlier! I doubt you'd be too averse to the smoochies either, seeing as I can still see your little 'problem' from all the way up here!" She crowed triumphantly, jabbing a delightedly accusing finger in the general direction of Sora's parasitic murder-lump.

"Huh?" I questioned, looking to my companions for any answers they were willing to forward. Sora had a problem? Why would he tell the scary blonde girl what it was instead of me? We were meant to be best friends dammit! And since when did the traitorous bastard start cavorting about with scantily clad super-models?

"Do I have to come down there and give you a briefing on boinking for dummies?" She threatened amusedly, chuckling when Sora blushed like he'd prefer nothing more than to melt into an innocuous puddle and proceed to seep into the cracks in the pavement.

Heck, at least he was attempting to live up to his future mini-self's name… Jealousy temporarily forgotten, I took a stab at trying to define just what the hell 'boinking' meant.

Cloud must have throttled me harder than I'd previously thought… either that or the ice cream had released so many endorphins that this was all just some crazed, sugar-induced fantasy. Maybe Sora and I would ride off into the sunset on a neon purple unicorn with hamburgers for hooves and streamers of bacon for a mane?

"Only if you give me the simplified version… preferably with pictures…" I quipped in reply, pretending to appear disinterested when in reality I was merely clueless and potentially concussed.

"I do have a flip chart, but I'd like to state in advance that my illustrative abilities are somewhat sorely lacking." She giggled, yet again, before cooing at Sora's adorably scarlet countenance. "My stick people are second to none, however, and I'm pretty sure I could whip up some miniature animated feature that would incorporate the majority of the sordid details!" She cheered enthusiastically, leaning back until her balance was so sorely compromised that she tumbled backwards into the building with a muffled screech.

"What just happened?" Sora posed the question in a dumbfounded, apprehensive manner. The only response I felt qualified to give was a slightly baffled shrug.

"I'm ok!" The voice rang out again, although the portentously violent noises, eerily reminiscent of weighty, blunt objects clunking hard against squishy, poorly cushioned items were hardly able to confirm such an outlandish statement.

"I breathe a melodramatic sigh of relief…" I deadpanned, rolling my eyes heavenward as Sora snickered at my attempts to be scathing and aloof.

"I would be much obliged if you were to inform me in the near future of the purpose for your visit, because if you're not distant familial members of the lady you are presently calling on, I may be forced to break your faces." Ah, another new player added to the soap opera that is my tortured existence. Pivoting about on one foot, almost falling face first to terra firma, which meant that the head trauma must have been doing wonders for the regulation of pressure or whatever in my inner ear, my gaze meshed with the narrowed eye, and… eye-patch, oddly enough, of the one that had probably been previously addressed as 'Gippykins'.

"Alas, none of us are related, but we do share a name, which counts for something, right?" I giggled childishly, blatantly ignoring the brunette's expression of fear and awe at my overwhelming confidence… or death wish… Meanwhile, I was just inordinately proud of myself for having quashed the urge to suddenly bellow: "AAAARR!" or some other pirate-related jargon.

"Ah, Strife's friend… I thought I recognised you, you don't see many people with hair that colour." He replied, as I smiled demurely, acceding to the fact that in most instances, my reputation proceeded me.

However, our chances of leaving this encounter unscathed were diminishing by the second, because due to the association with Cloud, not only was the man taller and more heftily proportioned than me, he was also most likely two years older.

"Good one… I'm sure Paine and 'Lai will be thrilled that you've forgotten one of their defining characteristics." Rikku snorted, although she was still pointedly absent from the conversation, and seemed to be resorting to sarcasm due to an ingrained conditioned response to the other blonde more than to any awareness of his actual presence.

"Does Cloud's doppelganger have a name?" He asked patronisingly, discarding Rikku's snide suggestion, drawling out the words with such condescension that even I could probably learn a thing or two.

"Aye! Avast!" The brunette answered eagerly, offering a dippy salute as a form of mortifyingly not savvy greeting. Upon realising his mistake, which had neared proportions of sheer, unadulterated idiocy, he grabbed his saluting hand in his other, using the interlocked body-parts to rather brutally smack himself on the forehead. "I mean… er… greetings and salutations to you, Mr. Gippykins! I'm Sora!" He chirped, before coming to another belated conclusion that his second attempt probably hadn't remedied the first disastrous impression he had put forward to the other man.

"I can only assume you're already quite well acquainted with Rikku then…" He sighed, folding back the material of his patch to reveal another vibrant, ocean-hued eye.

"GIPPAL? Is that you?" The blonde girl shrieked delightedly, practically throwing herself into her window in her haste to greet her… person she shared some sort of strange, unhealthily quirky relationship with.

"The one and only, Cid's Girl!" He responded amusedly, flashing her a killer smile that she seemed totally immune to. "So, you want to tell me why you've picked up two strays from school?" He queried, looking far less intimidating and threatening now that he had seen, judged, and instantly dismissed Sora and I from our previous roles of unsavoury characters or love rivals.

"Hey! You make it sound like I kidnapped them or something!" She hissed indignantly, wheeling out a truly masterful pout that Gippal also seemed well-equipped to instantly nullify.

"I wouldn't put it past you." He chuckled, laughing harder when she emitted an irritated groan.

"Whilst following the routine to the letter, I couldn't help but come across a certain spiky-headed youth getting frisky with his girlfriend in the middle of the street." She commenced her speech in a matter-of-fact tone, conveniently blinking and missing the glare I shot her for the 'girlfriend' comment. "Well, after she had made her move, Puddin' over there gawped like a mongoloid brained with a two-by-four, and seemed to need to be spurred into action to reconcile the new 'difficulties' he was experiencing." She snickered into her hand, the nails of which were painted a garish, fluorescent green. Sora retained his disguise as a tomato, seemingly devastated to have been addressed as 'Pudding'. "So, I took it upon myself as a benevolent member of our budding society to give him that little nudge. Then I found out that 'she' was a 'he', and one of Leon's friends at that! How's that for an awesome coincidence?" She cried exuberantly, flailing her arms about like a psychotic, out of control windmill. "Anyways, you've caught me as I was just about to hand over my newly doodled sex manual! Seeing as Kitty has been living under a rock for all of his sheltered life and isn't aware of the finer points of boinking." She delivered the finishing argument of her closing statement with a flourish, before clambering up onto the window ledge and bodily hurling herself out of the room.

There was little time to do anything apart from gape stupidly; my excuse to this day is that I was still reeling over being called 'Kitty'… the girl really did have a penchant for diabolically unsuitable nicknames…

However, her pirate in shining armour, who seemed worryingly desensitised to the other blonde's antics, lunged forward to catch the squirming bundle of energy, who looked none the worse for wear for someone who had just defenestrated from a considerable height.

"I really wished you'd stop doing that…" He muttered good-naturedly. Rikku merely giggled yet again, before kissing him soundly, whether as a 'hello' or a method of conveying thanks, I had no idea.

"No you don't!" She chirped dismissively. "Anyways, as I was saying, ta-da! Here is my animated guide to the joys of smexin'!" She cheered, thrusting a battered old notepad at me, which was immediately snatched out of the air by Gippal. He set his hyperactive girlfriend down so that he could flick through the pages.

The process seemed to leave him disorientated at first, and then merely nauseous.

"Is that a taeniura lymma getting it on with a sea urchin?" He demanded, apparently baffled as well as disconcerted.

"Whoa… calm down there, Mr. Marine Biologist, I think you killed Puddin'…" She mocked gently, tilting her intricately decorated head towards Sora, who was staring in confusion and mild horror, as seemed to be today's special. "Seeing as I am not a slave to the colossal wants of my equally colossal equal, Gippal seems to think Kitten looks like a blue-spotted stingray… In my defence, the only things that I had to hand were crayons, and the blue dots are meant to be eyes, not markings." She sulked, crinkling her nose in annoyance at the prospect of someone criticising her masterpiece. Why the hell did a… seventeen year-old? Well, she probably would have been if she knew Leon instead of Cloud… where was I? Oh, yeah… Why the hell did a seventeen year-old have crayons in her possession at all, let alone as drawing implements?

Impatient as always, Sora tired of the bantering and snatched the notepad from Gippal, eagerly flipping through the pages of Rikku's so-called 'sex manual'. Honestly… how was something like that going to define the murder-lump of certain death?

The brunette suddenly choked on thin air, or maybe a dust mote, forcing the notepad into my hands so he would never be forced to look upon its raunchy content ever again.

My first thought upon witnessing the jerkily moving cataclysm was that Gippal was exactly right… Sora definitely resembled a sea urchin with legs, and what I assumed was me looked like a formless blob-monster from the fathomless abyss.

The second thought, hot on the heels of the first, was the realisation of just what the brunette had been hiding in his jumpsuit. Initial humiliation aside at not putting something painfully simple together, I actually felt rather smug at my achievement. Take that, world! I can seduce a boy that probably still believes in Santa!

However, there is always an irksome little catch:

"Rikku… why am 'I' the one on the bottom?" I fairly growled, as if willing the blonde sharing my name, if not my common sense, to call me on the 'delicate' comment again.

"Technically you're the one on top." Gippal smirked, having overcome his squicked-out-ness rapidly in order to mock me into the ground.

"I think that's probably more likely because he takes up about three quarters of each page than any real subtlety on positioning." Sora pointed out, entirely unhelpfully.

"First I'm 'delicate', then I'm beyond emasculated, and now I'm an obese stingray?" I practically shrieked, highly displeased by the way the brunette had turned on me. Revenge was in order. "Well fine… just don't forget that you're the one who gets hard thinking about said obese stingray, urchin-boy!" I snarled, folding my arms defensively over my chest as I treated my audience to a fearsome glower. Oh god… 'urchin-boy'? I'm really losing my touch today…

Gippal's laughter ceased abruptly as his breath hitched in surprise, reducing him to pitiful wheezes. Rikku, always unflappable, seemed to be enjoying the spectacle, as she had plonked herself down on the kerb to watch events unfold.

"At least I can do something about it, Kitten!" Sora suddenly exploded with pent up rage. If the sight wasn't just so gosh-darned adorable, and so far short of even slightly menacing, I'm fairly sure I would have been trembling in the boots I would no longer need in order to pursue a career as a sea creature without legs.

"Then are you going to?" I purred deviously, smirking as Gippal took an all too conspicuous step back, away from the schizophrenic madman.

"Ooh! Saucer of milk for the Kitty!" Rikku crowed, keeping up her perpetual giggling as she eagerly awaited the climactic end to the melodrama.

At least Sora really didn't need to resort to parachute-pant rearranging feng shui to suitably align his chi; it seemed to be flowing to all locations without any obstructions whatsoever. I giggled wickedly at the notion, still wholly surprised, and not a little flattered at my discovery.

Now all I needed was the kiss and make-up portion of the afternoon and Leon and Cloud would be given a thank you present as well as a peace offering for sending me out alone with the cute little shrimp.

"Not before the third date, that's for damned sure." The brunette replied blithely, completely unaware that he was now the one that had assumed the role of the traditional female.

"Well there goes my plan to invite you up for coffee." I chuckled, shifting my hips to stand coquettishly, hands on hips and arms akimbo whilst attempting to look put-out.

"Riku, you know I don't like coffee… it's all icky and bitter and… brown…" He moaned pathetically, scrunching up his pudgy face like he'd just bitten down hard on a lemon.

"Is it just because he's about as up on his euphemisms as you are, or do I need to burn my manual before the police find me?" Rikku asked me, finally displaying signs of nervousness as Gippal proceeded to laugh his arse off at her expense.

"A little from Column A, a little from Column B…" Her boyfriend answered smoothly, doubling over with laughter as the crazy girl proceeded to lunge forward, snatching the abomination unto nature out of my hands in order to tear it into a blur of confetti which she then deposited down a nearby storm drain.

"All gone!" She enunciated like a children's presenter high on sugar and happy pills.

"While I am slightly relieved that you steeled yourself against urges that would ultimately lead to pyromania, how the hell would you have actually gone about burning your masterpiece?" I questioned, humour playing about my eyes as I grinned at the mental image of the blonde racing all over town to find a suitable, non-existent fireplace.

"It's not like anyone has much of a need for matches in this place… Unless you're counting the mosquito-repelling tea lights…" She confirmed my suspicions with a laugh, recounting some moment of nostalgia, as Gippal also adopted an amused, impish expression. "You know, what with this place being a: tro-pee-cal island in dee sun, ya?" She giggled as her male audience groaned at the abominable Wakka-impersonation.

"Terrible impressions aside, Rikku's hair has intimate knowledge of said aforementioned tea lights." He chuckled, delivering the clarification despite the inevitable pummelling it was going to warrant from the girl.

While she was undeniably stunning; a bronzed and blonde combination of hard lines and soft cambers, the fighting spark that lay dormant in her emerald eyes and the taut energy of tensed, honed muscle openly declared that she did not appreciate those who underestimated her.

This was indeed proved to be the case when Gippal grabbed the girl in a headlock, pulling her bandanna down over her angrily flashing eyes as he proceeded to give her the mother of all noogies.

In a matter of seconds he was pinned to the tarmac as the other blonde unleashed stinging, elasticised hell on his forehead. She actually seemed to be pulling the strap of the eye patch back, albeit only to release it with a cruel sounding snap, to the cadence of some inane and hideously catchy pop song.

I was overcome by a fit of endearingly juvenile giggles when I heard her singing muted, underlying strains of: "Drink up, me hearties, yo-ho!"

"I would have stepped back inside and 'borrowed' one of Pops' spare lighters. I think he has a stash of them in such vast numbers that they're directionally proportional to the quantity of cancer sticks he purchases." Rikku replied, answering the earlier question matter-of-factly, and rather succinctly, especially due to the fact that the blonde was potentially even more prone to rambling than I was.

Whether by cancelling out an existing debt owed to her boyfriend, or due to a brief moment of charity, Rikku decided that the savaging of Gippal could be put on hold and delayed a while longer, or at least until he committed yet another indiscretion that warranted violence with extreme prejudice.

"Heh… sometimes I can almost believe that he single-handedly keeps every single tobacconist on this island in business." Gippal chuckled ruefully whilst nursing the angrily red mark gracing his forehead, which seemed to be expanding with every second that passed.

"Wow… really? Maybe he'd get along with Professor Highwind!" Sora chipped in, smiling broadly.

It seemed that one of the brunette's ingrained character traits -one of the many that he was as of yet completely unaware of- was to pair up every single inhabitant of the small chain of islands with a likeminded companion. His mission: to spread love, platonic or otherwise, throughout the hearts of all he came across, and good old Cid seemed to be begging to be the little brunette's crowning achievement.

Then again, if my suspicions were even slightly accurate, Sora was in for one hell of a shock. Smoking was a rare and expensive habit here; the activity was frowned upon by the majority of the simple islanders and what tobacco we did have was all imported from elsewhere.

Wherever elsewhere actually was…

When Gippal had let slip the derogatory, hopelessly unoriginal 'Cid's Girl', and I had been fully subjected to Rikku's volatile nature and general crassness, it wasn't hard to forge the links between daddy and daughter.

The shock of blonde hair, the habitual goggles; the only inexplicable aspect of the relationship was how Rikku had somehow turned out so attractive, despite the odds that she should have been born grizzled, stubbly and cursing.

"So, the cantankerous old fart chewed you out too, huh?" Rikku hazarded a knowing guess upon picking up on my telltale shudder. Sora's head snapped up, like a puppy hearing a food-related buzzword, before cocking his head to the side in puzzlement. Maybe I was TOO apt with the puppy comparison… being made aware of the whole 'man's best friend' vibe was getting kinda creepy.

"Tea…" I was barely able to force the fearful, guttural response, hunted eyes scanning the streets nervously now that I KNEW that Professor Highwind could be rapidly closing in on my location from either side, pissed off as always, tea-set in hand.

The blondes dissolved into giggles, or as Gippal would no doubt like to correct, manly, dignified chuckles. Heck, if he was able to withstand the wrath of Cid, I definitely wasn't going to try and cross him. He had to have, like… super powers or something, who's to say he wasn't reading my thoughts RIGHT NOW?

Oh god, it's happening again… Stupid Tidus… Equally stupid Selphie… Curse their hides to Hades, I say! If I ended up huddled up in bed wearing a colander with a tin-foil antenna, rocking back and forth whilst warbling on about the government and midgets with glowing fingertips, I was going to sue every single article of clothing off their treacherous backs for emotional damages!

"He confiscated my ice cream…" Sora murmured forlornly, hanging his head as his face was flooded in disappointment and teenage angst. With an exasperated sigh, I clamped a hand down over one surprisingly well formed shoulder, forcing the boy to turn towards me. Sapphires swimming in a tempestuous sea of salty, attention seeking crocodile tears fixed themselves on my face as I took a feeble stab at the whole comfort nonsense and awkwardly began to pet the brunette's sable spikes.

As if by magic –no doubt a neat trick he had learnt from Ellone, who seemed to have mastered every aspect of the manipulation of weak minded males from about the age of three- the tears instantly dried and the brunette pushed up onto the balls of his feet to nuzzle into my hand, smiling broadly.

"Aww… that has to be one of the cutest sights I've ever seen! He's just like an ickle lion cub!" Rikku squealed; using the still prone Gippal as a springboard in order to jettison towards a now fearful Sora, who neatly sidestepped out of the reach of the girl's grasping hands.

Unfortunately, this meant that I was now the one directly blocking her trajectory, so it will suffice to say that I was the one who ended up sprawled on the cruel, unyielding ground with a ditzy blonde practically glomping all residual air out of my lungs.

"Where does it say in my contract that I have to take speeding bullets for you?" I moaned pitifully, wincing as a bony elbow that did not, to the best of my knowledge, belong to me, jabbed me brutally in my injured side.

"We're best friends, Ri-ku!" He grinned impenitently, nearly purring out the lengthening of my name as he offered a helping hand back to the realm of those able to stand unaided. "You know I'd do the same for you!" He concluded with a giggle, knowing full well that it was nigh impossible to sustain any sort of grudge against him as I took the outstretched palm, locking his fingers around my own.

Rikku was already bouncing back to Gippal, who had also risen, now that the dead weight holding him down was temporarily absent. She seemed totally unfazed by the brief, disastrous encounter, although her boyfriend was shooting me quite the death glare.

"Right, here's how you can return the favour: I need you to stall Long John Silver over there while I skip town." I deadpanned, torn, as always, between sincerity and sarcasm. Rikku giggled, covering her mouth with a delicate hand as she noticed Gippal's expression and my aura of nervousness.

"Behave, Mister, or I'll report you to the old man. He's due back in a few minutes, and it'd be nice if we could have the 'talk' with him doing the mediating." She drawled slyly, obviously entertained by the sensations of panic that accompanied any mention of the mad professor. I had no idea what the 'talk' was meant to be about, but judging by the way Gippal just shrivelled up on the spot, I doubt it possesses many positive connotations.

"You can't let Cid see us in public together! Or at all! He'll KILL me!" Gippal fairly wailed, raking his hands through his increasingly chaotic hair before using his closed fists to begin the process of ferociously ripping tufts straight out of his head.

"That's it Gippal… fight for our love, for it shall triumph in the face of all adversity…" She rolled her eyes at his apparent cowardice, although I felt a grudging sort of admiration for the man on the sole reasoning that he was even willing to risk certain death, let alone consider the notion of assisted suicide.

"But the man has a HARPOON!" The blonde screeched back indignantly. My eyebrows near enough rocketed up into my hairline, and I didn't need to turn to see that Sora's expression would mirror my own.

"So he's a little… overprotective…" Rikku grudgingly conceded. Upon receiving a rather pointed, disbelieving look from Gippal, she giggled sheepishly. "Ok, so he's like a raving psychopath when it comes to his 'little girl'… I'll let you all off the hook if the pair of you get your act together and finish what you started." She decided, before turning away from her boyfriend to smirk mischievously in our direction.

What did we start? We've managed to accomplish very little since departing from school, now that I actually think about it…

"And what if we don't?" Sora demanded snottily, puffing up in righteous indignation to proudly display his resolve.

"Whenever you go to get another ice cream in this town, Professor Highwind will be there… whenever you fancy going out to buy candy, Professor Highwind will be there…" She stated ominously, grinning malevolently when Sora whimpered at the prospect of never receiving a sugar-fix again.

"Ri-ku!" Again with the extended vowel usage! I'll admit that it was kind of cute, but then again, we also weren't five anymore. Dilemmas, dilemmas… "You wouldn't let Professor Cid take my ice cream again, would you?" He pleaded, perfectly circular cobalt eyes expanding to the size of dinner plates as he begged. No man with even a mere shred of kindness in him could refuse those eyes… Damn them, and their hugeness…

"Sora… I…" The eyes, if anything, got even wider. "I promise that I'll keep the sugar safe for you." I sighed, hopelessly defeated once again. Rikku's face fell slightly, while Gippal merely adopted a befuddled countenance.

"Even if you get harpooned?" The brunette asked; wonderment and awe flooding his demeanour.

"Even if I get harpooned… but that's not an invitation to anyone, because I'd really rather not…" I grumbled, internally cursing the fact that my 'feelings' encompassed all aspects of self-sacrifice and devotion. What confused me, though, was the thought that they also didn't seem to be foreign, or newly discovered.

_-I would die as many times as it takes, to save him from my darkness.-_

Er… what the hell? Everything seems to be sneaking up on me today… though the common theme in motive is apparently to deliver a stunning blow to the head.

But then the brunette was smiling for me, and I almost forgot to breathe, let alone analyse mysterious thoughts and remembrances. Velveteen lips collided with my cheek with all the force of a freight train, which certainly jarred me back into coherence, until my thoughts were suddenly addled and clouded again, the realisation that he'd kissed me having finally sunken in.

My arms awkwardly and automatically came up to steady the boy, who was being irrationally happy for something as frivolous as processed sugar, as he was still babbling cheerfully and clinging to my waist.

Once I had made absolutely sure that the pair of us were not going to land in a tangled heap of limbs and bruises, I set the giddy brunette back on his feet and smoothed down his creasing clothes as best as I was able on such short notice.

The blondes were both grinning madly at the spectacle, enjoying my contented confusion and Sora's affectionate naivety as he continued to prattle on about seemingly anything and everything.

"It's nice that one of you is impulsive, I'd hate to see the pair of you dancing around each other for the rest of your lives." Gippal smiled genuinely, although his eyes contained a hint of sadness, which Rikku also seemed to pick up upon.

"We'll get them together yet, Gippykins, even if we have to cram them into a cupboard and lock the door." She chuckled fondly, taking one of his hands in hers and linking their fingers.

"And if 'Lai ends up dead?" He queried with a knowing smirk.

"Then at least he'll have died in the arms of the woman he loves. And Dr. P will reflect upon her actions long and hard in prison." She decided, before bursting into peals of melodic laughter. While I still had no clue who those people were, Rikku had earlier affirmed that they were fellow albinos, so later on I'd probably attempt to ingratiate myself into their company, if only for someone slightly paler to stand next to. Though not too close to the 'Doctor', she sounded dangerous…

Suddenly, an ominous growling interrupted Rikku's bout of giggling. The noise was rather perturbing, a growing crescendo of gurgles and feral rumblings, sound effects usually tacked onto papier-mâché monsters in cheap horror flicks.

"You couldn't have eaten more than twenty minutes ago…" I callously pointed out to Sora, who was doubled over, apparently famished to the point of near-death.

"That was ice cream, Riku; ice cream is not proper sustenance." The brunette addressed me like I was extremely dull and witless, which I did not take kindly to.

"Well, if that is indeed the case, we'll have to start doing runs to the greengrocer's, and not the ice cream parlour." I drawled matter-of-factly, going so far as to start fiddling with my hair to feign inattentiveness.

"You wouldn't." Sora gasped, pinning me like a butterfly to a corkboard with his shaken, accusing gaze.

"Do you really know me so well, Sora?" I demanded wickedly, effortlessly throwing a devil may care smirk into the equation.

"Of course I do, you've subjected me to your terrible acting for years now, so it's not exactly difficult to recognise." He scoffed, still bristling due to the threat. He wasn't going to pull his punches; the sugar was too precious to him.

"Sounds like someone's sulking because he's going to have to buy his own supper…" I growled in response, implicitly knowing which buttons to push in return. Not that this was a difficult task when it came to Sora, the boy was so open and outspoken it was hard not to know what was going on in his equally straightforward mind.

"Speaking of supper, I do believe someone owes me a meal ticket." He beamed, "And I do intend that you make good on your promise! So, Rikku, Mr. Gippykins, it has been a delight, and I hope that we can reacquaint ourselves when next we meet!" He chirped, before hooking a slender arm through the crook of one of mine.

I turned haunted, lamp-like eyes on the two gaping blondes, who simply stood and watched as I was dragged to my impending mutilation. Rikku finally regained enough sense to wave.

"Who are you and what have you done with Sora?" I asked suspiciously, wondering whether this pod person was aware of how wrong it had sounded with a proper mastering of speech.

"Funny boy…" The brunette replied with a distinctly not amused eye-roll.

"Fine, if you're really Sora, then you'll be able to answer my question… A question no other human being knows the answer to." I stated deviously, quirking an eyebrow as the boy sighed at my strange behaviour. Ok… now all I needed was a question. Damn my lack of foresight! "What is my cat called?" I questioned, attempting to conceal my humiliation at such a naff question with traditional superiority. Sora continued to stare at me as if I had grown another head.

"Riku, the only pet you've ever owned in your life was a rock, and you accidentally killed that by mistaking it for a skipping stone. It now resides in Davy Jones' Locker, after bouncing a grand total of six times." He stated nervously, scanning my expressions as if he could get a heads up before I started shrieking about garden centres.

"Ok, I believe you, you're Sora. What the hell was all that about though?" I asked worriedly, not knowing what to do with this eerily tranquil Sora who was hauling me down the street with no apparent discomfort or effort whatsoever.

"Professor Highwind had just turned the corner. He is NOT harpooning you Riku, not today!" He declared vehemently, before turning in mid-step to grin at me.

"WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THE SEVEN HELLS ARE YOU DOING TO MY DAUGHTER?"

"Ah… he seems to have reached his destination." Sora concluded, albeit rather redundantly. My eyes widened as my ears caught a particularly graphic and imaginative curse.

Was that even possible?

* * *

We arrived at the shopping centre a short while later, occasionally glancing over our shoulders to confirm that Cid hadn't chosen us to be his next targets for extermination or castration. 

When I say 'shopping centre', it's probably more accurate to clarify that it's just a stand of shops and boutiques and outlets and so on and so forth, wearing the guise of an organised unit of edifices. The only area that seemed even vaguely structured was the repast district, and that was only because yet another chain of indiscriminate coffee shops had practically bought out every lease on the whole street.

I ignored the nagging feeling in my chest, which was sulkily demanding that I address the whole issue of 'the kiss', in favour of throwing myself wholeheartedly into my latest mission.

"So, where exactly do we commence our search for the perfect present?" Sora asked amusedly, upon witnessing my near stalker-ish perusal of all of the shops in the immediate vicinity.

"That one." I stated firmly, gesturing over to what appeared to resemble a typical toy store. Whatever the heck it was, and I couldn't see any neon sign with a forthcoming name, probably because I was far too lazy to look, it seemed to cater exclusively to the under-fives, which fitted my specifications nicely.

I dragged the protesting boy –for which self-respecting fifteen year-old male would enter a shop that sold maternity wear under any circumstances that didn't involve duress?- through the heavy double doors, and prepared to begin the hunt.

It didn't take long. After speedily perusing the shelves and shrugging off help from peppy members of staff, who seemed rather concerned as to my presence in such a shop, a pair of glinting blue eyes caught my own, and the rest was history.

I closed in on the auburn afro of the doll, gazing blankly at me through its ironed-on eyes, pursing his stitched lips and puffing out his chubby rosy cheeks. He was perfect.

"Riku, why are we stopping here? I don't like the doll section! They scare me!" He whined, clutching at the back of my t-shirt as if I would protect him from their perturbing, emotionless, dead-eyed stares. "As do clowns…" He added as an afterthought.

"Sora, meet Puddle."


End file.
